The winning of Canada : a chronicle of Wolfe

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CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton

In thirty-two volumes

11

THE WINNING OF CANADA
BY WILLIAM WOOD

Part III

The English Invasion

JAMES WOLFE
From the National Portrait Gallery

THE WINNING
OF CANADA

A Chronicle of Wolfe

BY

WILLIAM WOOD

TORONTO

GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY
1920

Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention

PRSSS or THB HUNTBR-ROSB Co., LIMITED,

TO
MY MOTHER

w.c.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ANY life of Wolfe can be artificially simplified
by treating his purely military work as some-
thing complete in itself and not as a part of
a greater whole. But, since such treatment
gives a totally false idea of his achievement,
this little sketch, drawn straight from original
sources, tries to show him as he really was,
a co-worker with the British fleet in a war
based entirely on naval strategy and insepar-
ably connected with international affairs of
world-wide significance. The only simplifica-
tion attempted here is that of arrangement
and expression.

W- W.

Quebec, April 1914.

vil

CONTENTS

Page
I. THE BOY I

II. THE YOUNG SOLDIER . . • . .10

III. THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE . ... 28

IV. THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR .... 43
V. LOUISBOURG . . N \ •• • • 52

VI. QUEBEC . . . ' . " , . .67

VII. THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM , . . 99

VIII. EPILOGUE— THE LAST STAND . • , • HO

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . ... . 147

INDEX ... . . . .149

ILLUSTRATIONS

JAMES WOLFE Pr<mti»pUce

From the National Portrait Gallery.

WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM . Daring page 52
VIEW OF LOUISBOURG IN 1758 .. . „ 58

THE SIEGE OF LOUISBOURG, 1758 .. „ 64

Map by Bartholomew.

THE SIEGE OF QUEBEC . . ." . „ go

Map by Bartholomew.

THE DEATH OF WOLFE. ... ,,140

After the painting: by Benjamin West.

LORD AM H ERST . . . . . ,,144

From the painting: by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

CHAPTER I

THE BOY
1727-1741

WOLFE was a soldier born. Many of his
ancestors had stood ready to fight for king
and country at a moment's notice. His father
fought under the great Duke of Marlborough
in the war against France at the beginning
of the eighteenth century. His grandfather,
his great-grandfather, his only uncle, and
his only brother were soldiers too. Nor has
the martial spirit deserted the descendants of
the Wolfes in the generation now alive. They
are soldiers still. The present head of the
family, who represented it at the celebration
of the tercentenary of the founding of Quebec,
fought in Egypt for Queen Victoria ; and the
member of it who represented Wolfe on that
occasion, in the pageant of the Quebec cam-
paign, is an officer in the Canadian army
under George V.

The Wolfes are of an old and honourable

2 THE WINNING OF CANADA

line. Many hundreds of years ago their fore-
fathers lived in England and later on in
Wales. Later still, in the 'fifteenth century,
before America was discovered, they were liv-
ing in Ireland. Wolfe's father, however, was
born in England ; and, as there is no evidence
that any of his ancestors in Ireland had
married other than English Protestants, and as
Wolfe's mother was also English, we may say
that the victor of Quebec was a pure-bred
Englishman. Among his Anglo-Irish kins-
men were the Goldsmiths and the Seymours.
Oliver Goldsmith himself was always very proud
of being a cousin of the man who took Quebec.
Wolfe's mother, to whom he owed a
great deal of his genius, was a descendant
of two good families in Yorkshire. She
was eighteen years younger than his father,
and was very tall and handsome. Wolfe
thought there was no one like her. When
he was a colonel, and had been through
the wars and at court, he still believed she
was * a match for all the beauties.' He was
not lucky enough to take after her in looks,
except in her one weak feature, a cutaway
chin. His body, indeed, seems to have been
made up of the bad points of both parents :
he had his rheumatism from his father. But

THE BOY 3

his spirit was made up of all their good
points ; and no braver ever lived in any
healthy foody than in his own sickly, lanky six
foot three.

Wolfe's parents went to live at Westerham
in Kent shortly after they were married ; and
there, on January 2, 1727, in the vicarage —
where Mrs Wolfe was staying while her husband
was away on duty with his regiment — the
victor of Quebec was born. Two other houses
in the little country town of Westerham are
full of memories of Wolfe. One of these was
his father's, a house more than two hundred
years old when he was born. It was built
in the reign of Henry VII, and the loyal sub-
ject who built it had the king's coat of arms
carved over the big stone fireplace. Here
Wolfe and his younger brother Edward used
to sit in the winter evenings with their mother,
while their veteran father told them the story
of his long campaigns. So, curiously enough,
it appears that Wolfe, the soldier who won
Canada for England in 1759, sat under the
arms of the king in whose service the sailor
Cabot hoisted the flag of England over Canadian
soil in 1497. This house has been called
Quebec House ever since the victory in 1759.
The other house is Squerryes Court, belonging

4 THE WINNING OF CANADA

then and now to the Warde family, the Wolfes'
closest friends. Wolfe and George Warde were
chums from the first day they met. Both
wished to go into the Army; and both, of
course, ' played soldiers/ like other virile
boys. Warde lived to be an old man and
actually did become a famous cavalry leader.
Perhaps when he charged a real enemy, sword
in hand, at the head of thundering squadrons,
it may have flashed through his mind how he
and Wolfe had waved their whips and cheered
like mad when they galloped their ponies down
the common with nothing but their barking
dogs behind them.

Wolfe's parents presently moved to Green-
wich, where he was sent to school at Swinden's.
Here he worked quietly enough till just before
he entered on his 'teens. Then the long-pent
rage of England suddenly burst in war with
Spain. The people went wild when the British
fleet took Porto Bello, a Spanish port in Central
America. The news was cried through the
streets all night. The noise of battle seemed to
be sounding all round Swinden's school, where
most of the boys belonged to naval and military
families. Ships were fitting out in English har-
bours. Soldiers were marching into every

THE BOY 5

English camp. Crowds were singing and cheer-
ing. First one boy's father and then another's
was under orders for the front. Among them
was Wolfe's father, who was made adjutant-
general to the forces assembling in the Isle of
Wight. What were history and geography
and mathematics now, when a whole nation
was afoot to fight ! And who would not fight
the Spaniards when they cut off British sailors'
ears ? That was an old tale by this time ; but
the flames of anger threw it into lurid relief
once more.

Wolfe was determined to go and fight. No-
thing could stop him. There was no commis-
sion for him as an officer. Never mind ! He
would go as a volunteer and win his commission
in the field. So, one hot day in July 1740, the
lanky, red-haired boy of thirteen-and-a-half
took his seat on the Portsmouth coach beside
his father, the veteran soldier of fifty-five.
His mother was a woman of much too fine a
spirit to grudge anything for the service of
her country; but she could not help being
exceptionally anxious about the dangers of
disease for a sickly boy in a far-off land of
pestilence and fever. . She had written to him
the very day he left. But he, full of the stir
and excitement of a big camp, had carried the

6 THE WINNING OF CANADA

letter in his pocket for two or three days
before answering it. Then he wrote her the
first of many letters from different seats of
war, the last one of all being written just before
he won the victory that made him famous
round the world.

Newport, Isle of Wight,
August 6th, 1740.

I received my dearest Mamma's letter on
Monday last, but could not answer it then,
by reason I was at camp to see the regi-
ments off to go on board, and was too late
for the post ; but am very sorry, dear
Mamma, that you doubt my love, which
I 'm sure is as sincere as ever any son's
was to his mother.

Papa and I are just going on board, but
I believe shall not sail this fortnight ; in
which time, if I can get ashore at Ports-
mouth or any other town, I will certainly
write to you, and, when we are gone, by
every ship we meet, because I know it is
my duty. Besides, if it is not, I would do
it out of love, with pleasure.

I am sorry to hear that your head is so
bad, which I fear is caused by your being
so melancholy ; but pray, dear Mamma, if

THE BOY 7

you love me, don't give yourself up to fears
for us. I hope, if it please God, we shall
soon see one another, which will be the
happiest day that ever I shall see. I will,
as sure as I live, if it is possible for me, let
you know everything that has happened,
by every ship ; therefore pray, dearest
Mamma, don't doubt about it. I am in a
very good state of health, and am likely
to continue so. Pray my love to my
brother. Pray my service to Mr Streton
and his family, to Mr and Mrs Weston, and
to George Warde when you see him ; and
pray believe me to be, my dearest Mamma,
your most dutiful, loving and affectionate
son, J. Wolfe.

To Mrs. Wolfe, at her house in Greenwich, Kent.

Wolfe's ' very good state of health ' was not
* likely to continue so,' either in camp or on
board ship. A long peace had made the
country indifferent to the welfare of the Army
and Navy. Now men were suddenly being
massed together in camps and fleets as if on
purpose to breed disease. Sanitation on a
large scale, never having been practised in
peace, could not be improvised in this hurried,
though disastrously slow, preparation for a

8 THE WINNING OF CANADA

war. The ship in which Wolfe was to sail had
been lying idle for years ; and her pestilential
bilge-water soon began to make the sailors and
soldiers sicken and die. Most fortunately,
Wolfe was among the first to take ill ; and so
he was sent home in time to save him from the
fevers of Spanish America.

Wolfe was happy to see his mother again, to
have his pony to ride and his dogs to play with.
But, though he tried his best to stick to his
lessons, his heart was wild for the war. He
and George Warde used to go every day during
the Christmas holidays behind the pigeon-
house at Squerryes Court and practise with their
swords and pistols. One day they stopped when
they heard the post-horn blowing at the gate ;
and both of them became very much excited
when George's father came out himself with a
big official envelope marked ' On His Majesty's
Service ' and addressed to ' James Wolfe,
Esquire.' Inside was a commission as second
lieutenant in the Marines, signed by George II
and dated at St James's Palace, November 3,
1741. Eighteen years later, when the fame
of the conquest of Canada was the talk of the
kingdom, the Wardes had a stone monument
built to mark the spot where Wolfe was stand-
ing when the squire handed him his first com-

THE BOY 9

mission. And there it is to-day ; and on it are
the verses ending,

This spot so sacred will forever claim
A proud alliance with its hero's name.

Wolfe was at last an officer. But the Marines
were not the corps for him. Their service
companies were five thousand miles away,
while war with France was breaking out much
nearer home. So what was his delight at
receiving another commission, on March 25,
1742, as an ensign in the I2th Regiment of Foot !
He was now fifteen, an officer, a soldier bcrn
and bred, eager to serve his country, and just
appointed to a regiment ordered to the front !
Within a month an army such as no one had
seen since the days of Marlborough had been
assembled at Blackheath. Infantry, cavalry,
artillery, and engineers, they were all there
when King George II, the Prince of Wales, and
the Duke of Cumberland came down to review
them. Little did anybody think that the tall,
eager ensign carrying the colours of the I2th
past His Majesty was the man who was to play
the foremost part in winning Canada for the
British crown.

CHAPTER II

THE YOUNG SOLDIER
1741-1748

WOLFE'S short life may be divided into four
periods, all easy to remember, because all
are connected with the same number —
seven. He was fourteen years a boy at
home, with one attempt to be a soldier. This
period lasted from 1727 to 1741. Then he
was seven years a young officer in time of
war, from 1741 to 1748. Then he served
seven years more in time of peace, from 1748
to 1755. Lastly, he died in the middle, at
the very climax, of the world-famous Seven
Years' War, in 1759.

After the royal review at Blackheath in
the spring of 1742 the army marched down to
Deptford and embarked for Flanders. Wolfe
was now off to the very places he had heard
his father tell about again and again. The
surly Flemings were still the same as when

his father knew them. They hated their
10

THE YOUNG SOLDIER n

British allies almost as much as they hated
their enemies. The long column of redcoats
marched through a scowling mob of citizens,
who meanly grudged a night's lodging to the
very men coming there to fight for them.
We may be sure that Wolfe thought little
enough of such mean people as he stepped out
with the colours flying above his head. The
army halted at Ghent, an ancient city, famous
for its trade and wealth, and defended by walls
which had once resisted Marlborough.

At first there was a good deal to do and see ;
and George Warde was there too, as an officer
in a cavalry regiment. But Warde had to
march away ; and Wolfe was left without any
companion of his own age, to pass his spare
time the best way he could. Like another
famous soldier, Frederick the Great, who first
won his fame in this very war, he was fond of
music and took lessons on the flute. He also
did his best to improve his French ; and when
Warde came back the two friends used to go
to the French theatre. Wolfe put his French
to other use as well, and read all the military
books he could find time for. He always
kept his kit ready to pack; so that he could
have marched anywhere within two hours of
receiving the order. And, though only a mere

12 THE WINNING OF CANADA

boy-officer, he began to learn the duties of an
adjutant, so that he might be fit for promotion
whenever the chance should come.

Months wore on and Wolfe was still at
Ghent. He had made friends during his
stay, and he tells his mother in September :
* This place is full of officers, and we never
want company. I go to the play once or twice
a week, and talk a little with the ladies, who
are very civil and speak French.' Before
Christmas it had been decided at home — where
the war-worn father now was, after a horrible
campaign at Cartagena — that Edward, the
younger son, was also to be allowed to join the
Army. Wolfe was delighted. * My brother
is much to be commended for the pains he
takes to improve himself. I hope to see him
soon in Flanders, when, in all probability,
before next year is over, we may know some-
thing of our trade.' And so they did !

The two brothers marched for the Rhine
early in 1743, both in the same regiment.
James was now sixteen, Edward fifteen. The
march was a terrible one for such delicate boys.
The roads were ankle-deep in mud ; the
weather was vile; both food and water were
very bad. Even the dauntless Wolfe had
to confess to his mother that he was ' very

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 13

much fatigued and out of order. I never come
into quarters without aching hips and knees.1
Edward, still more delicate, was sent off on
a foraging party to find something for the
regiment to eat. He wrote home to his father
from Bonn on April 7 : * We can get nothing
upon our march but eggs and bacon and sour
bread. I have no bedding, nor can get it
anywhere. We had a sad march last Monday
in the morning. I was obliged to walk up
to my knees in snow, though my brother and
I have a horse between us. I have often lain
upon straw, and should oftener, had I not
known some French, which I find very useful ;
though I was obliged the other day to speak
Latin for a good dinner. We send for every-
thing we want to the priest.'

That summer, when the king arrived with
his son the Duke of Cumberland, the British
and Hanoverian army was reduced to 37,000
half-fed men. Worse still, the old general, Lord
Stair, had led it into a very bad place. These
37,000 men were cooped up on the narrow side
of the valley of the river Main, while a much
larger French army was on the better side,
holding bridges by which to cut them off and
attack them while they were all clumped
together. Stair tried to slip away in the night.

14 THE WINNING OF CANADA

But the French, hearing of this attempt, sent
12,000 men across the river to hold the place
the British general was leaving, and 30,000
more, under the Due de Gramont, to block
the road at the place towards which he was
evidently marching. At daylight the British
and Hanoverians found themselves cut off,
both front and rear, while a third French
force was waiting to pounce on whichever
end showed weakness first. The King of
England, who was also Elector of Hanover,
would be a great prize, and the French were
eager to capture him. This was how the
armies faced each other on the morning of
June 27, 1743, at Dettingen, the last battle-
field on which any king of England has fought
in person, and the first for Wolfe.

The two young brothers were now about to
see a big battle, like those of which their
father used to tell them. Strangely enough,
Amherst, the future commander-in-chief in
America, under whom Wolfe served at Louis-
bourg, and the two men who succeeded Wolfe
in command at Quebec— Monckton and Town-
shend — were also there. It is an awful
moment for a young soldier, the one before
his first great fight. And here were nearly a
hundred thousand men, all in full view of each

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 15

other, and all waiting for the word to begin.
It was a beautiful day, and the sun shone down
on a splendidly martial sight. There stood the
British and Hanoverians, with wooded hills on
their right, the river and the French on their
left, the French in their rear, and the French
very strongly posted on the rising ground
straight in their front. The redcoats were in
dense columns, their bayonets flashing and
their colours waving defiance. Side by side
with their own red cavalry were the black
German cuirassiers, the blue German lancers,
and the gaily dressed green and scarlet
Hungarian hussars. The long white lines of
the three French armies, varied with royal blue,
encircled them on three sides. On the fourth
were the leafy green hills.

Wolfe was acting as adjutant and helping
the major. His regiment had neither colonel
nor lieutenant-colonel with it that day ; so
he had plenty to do, riding up and down to see
that all ranks understood the order that they
were not to fire till they were close to the
French and were given the word for a volley.
He cast a glance at his brother, standing
straight and proudly with the regimental
colours that he himself had carried past the
king at Blackheath the year before. He was

1 6 THE WINNING OF CANADA

not anxious about ' Ned ' ; he knew how all
the Wolfes could fight. He was not anxious
about himself ; he was only too eager for the
fray. A first battle tries every man, and few
have not dry lips, tense nerves, and beating
hearts at its approach. But the great anxiety
of an officer going into action for the first
time with untried men is for them and not
for himself. The agony of wondering whether
they will do well or not is worse, a thousand
times, than what he fears for his own safety.

Presently the French gunners, in rhe centre
of their position across the Main, lit their
matches and, at a given signal, fired a salvo
into the British rear. Most of the baggage
wagons were there ; and, as the shot and shell
began to knock them over, the drivers were
seized with a panic. Cutting the traces, these
men galloped off up the hills and into the woods
as hard as they could go. Now battery after
battery began to thunder, and the fire grew hot
all round. The king had been in the rear,
as he did not wish to change the command
on the eve of the battle. But, seeing the panic,
he galloped through the whole of his army to
show that he was going to fight beside his men.
As he passed, and the men saw what he in-
tended to do, they cheered and cheered, and

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 17

took heart so boldly that it was hard work to
keep them from rushing up the heights of
Dettingen, where Gramont's 30,000 French-
men were waiting to shoot them down.

Across the river Marshal Noailles, the
French commander-in-chief, saw the sudden
stir in the British ranks, heard the roaring
hurrahs, and supposed that his enemies were
going to be fairly caught against Gramont in
front. In this event he could finish their defeat
himself by an overwhelming attack in flank.
Both his own and Gramont's artillery now
redoubled their fire, till the British could
hardly stand it. But then, to the rage and
despair of Noailles, Gramont's men, thinking
the day was theirs, suddenly left their strong
position and charged down on to the same level
as the British, who were only too pleased to
meet them there. The king, seeing what a
happy turn things were taking, galloped along
the front of his army, waving his sword and
calling out, ' Now, boys ! Now for the honour
of England ! ' His horse, maddened by the
din, plunged and reared, and would have run
away with him, straight in among the French,
if a young officer called Trapaud had not
seized the reins. The king then dismounted
and put himself at the head of his troops,

w.c. B

i8 THE WINNING OF CANADA

where he remained fighting, sword in hand,
till the battle was over.

Wolfe and his major rode along the line
of their regiment for the last time. There was
not a minute to lose. Down came the Royal
Musketeers of France, full gallop, smash
through the Scots Fusiliers and into the line
in rear, where most of them were unhorsed
and killed. Next, both sides advanced their
cavalry, but without advantage to either.
Then, with a clear front once more, the main
bodies of the French and British infantry
rushed together for a fight to a finish. Nearly
all of Wolfe's regiment were new to war and
too excited to hold their fire. When they were
within range, and had halted for a moment
to steady the ranks, they brought their muskets
down to the ' present.' The French fell flat
on their faces and the bullets whistled harm-
lessly over them. Then they sprang to their
feet and poured in a steady volley while the
British were reloading. But the second
British volley went home. When the two
enemies closed on each other with the bayonet,
like the meeting of two stormy seas, the
British fought with such fury that the French
ranks were broken. Soon the long white
waves rolled back and the long red waves

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 19

rolled forward. Dettingen was reached and
the desperate fight was won.

Both the boy-officers wrote home, Edward
to his mother, James to his father. Here is a
part of Edward's letter :

My brother and self escaped in the en-
gagement and, thank God, are as well as
ever we were in our lives, after riot only
being cannonaded two hours and three-
quarters, and fighting with small arms
[muskets and bayonets] two hours and one-
quarter, but lay the two following nights
upon our arms ; whilst it rained for about
twenty hours in the same time, yet are
ready and as capable to do the same again.
The Duke of Cumberland behaved charm-
ingly. Our regiment has got a great deal
of honour, for we were in the middle of
the first line, and in the greatest danger.
My brother has wrote to my father and I
believe has given him a small account of
the battle, so I hope you will excuse it
me.

A manly and soldier-like letter for a boy of
fifteen ! Wolfe's own is much longer and full
of touches that show how cool and observant

20 THE WINNING OF CANADA

he was, even in his first battle and at the age of
only sixteen. Here is some of it :

The Gens d'Armes, or Mousquetaires
Gris, attacked the first line, composed of
nine regiments of English foot, and four or
five of Austrians, and some Hanoverians.
But before they got to the second line, out
of two hundred there were not forty living.
These unhappy men were of the first
families in France. Nothing, I believe,
could be more rash than their undertaking.
The third and last attack was made by the
foot on both sides. We advanced towards
one another ; our men in high spirits, and
very impatient for fighting, being elated
with beating the French Horse, part of
which advanced towards us ; while the
rest attacked our Horse, but were soon
driven back by the great fire we gave them.
The major and I (for we had neither colonel
nor lieutenant-colonel), before they came
near, were employed in begging and ordering
the men not to fire at too great a dis-
tance, but to keep it till the enemy should
come near us ; but to little purpose. The
whole fired when they thought they could
reach them, which had like to have ruined

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 21

us. However, we soon rallied again, and
attacked them with great fury, which gained
us a complete victory, and forced the enemy
to retire in great haste. We got the sad
news of the death of as good and brave a
man as any amongst us, General Clayton.
His death gave us all sorrow, so great was
the opinion we had of him. He had, 'tis
said, orders for pursuing the enemy, and
if we had followed them, they would not
have repassed the Main with half their
number. Their loss is computed to be
between six and seven thousand men, and
ours three thousand. His Majesty was in
the midst of the fight ; and the duke be-
haved as bravely as a man could do. I had
several times the honour of speaking with
him just as the battle began and was often
afraid of his being dashed to pieces by the
cannon-balls. He gave his orders with a
great deal of calmness and seemed quite
unconcerned. The soldiers were in high
delight to have him so near them. I some-
times thought I had lost poor Ned when I
saw arms, legs, and heads beat off close
by him. A horse I rid of the colonel's, at
the first attack, was shot in one of his hinder
legs and threw me ; so I was obliged to do

82

the duty of an adjutant all that and the
next day on foot, in a pair of heavy boots.
Three days after the battle I got the horse
again, and he is almost well.

Shortly after Dettingen Wolfe was appointed
adjutant and promoted to a lieutenancy. In
the next year he was made a captain in the
4th Foot while his brother became a lieutenant
in the I2th. After this they had very few
chances of meeting ; and Edward, who had
, caught a deadly chill, died alone in Flanders,
not yet seventeen years old. Wolfe wrote
home to his mother :

Poor Ned wanted nothing but the satisfac-
tion of seeing his dearest friends to leave
the world with the greatest tranquillity. It
gives me many uneasy hours when I reflect
on the possibility there was of my being
with him before he died. God knows it was
not apprehending the danger the poor
fellow was in ; and even that would not
have hindered it had I received the
physician's first letter. I know you won't
be able to read this without shedding tears,
as I do writing it. Though it is the custom
of the army to sell the deceased's effects, I
could not suffer it. We none of us want,

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 23

and I thought the best way would be to
bestow them on the deserving whom he
had an esteem for in his lifetime. To his
servant — the most honest and faithful man
I ever knew — I gave all his clothes. I gave
his horse to his friend Parry. I know he
loved Parry, and for that reason the horse
will be taken care of. His other horse I
keep myself. I have his watch, sash,
gorget, books, and maps, which I shall
preserve to his memory. He was an honest
and good lad, had lived very well, and
always discharged his duty with the cheer-
fulness becoming a good officer. He lived
and died as a son of you two should. There
was no part of his life that makes him
dearer to me than what you so often
mentioned — he pined after me.

It was this pining to follow Wolfe to the
wars that cost poor Ned his life. But did not
Wolfe himself pine to follow his father ?

The next year, 1745, the Young Pretender,
* Bonnie Prince Charlie,' raised the Highland
clans on behalf of his father, won several
battles, and invaded England, in the hope of
putting the Hanoverian Georges off the throne

24 THE WINNING OF CANADA

of Great Britain and regaining it for the exiled
Stuarts. The Duke of Cumberland was sent
to crush him ; and with the duke went Wolfe.
Prince Charlie's army retreated and was at
last brought to bay on Culloden Moor, six miles
from Inverness. The Highlanders were not
in good spirits after their long retreat before
the duke's army, which enjoyed an immense
advantage in having a fleet following it along
the coast with plenty of provisions, while the
prince's wretched army was half starved.
We may be sure the lesson was not lost on
Wolfe. Nobody understood better than he
that the fleet is the first thing to consider in
every British war. And nobody saw a better
example of this than he did afterwards in
Canada.

At daybreak on April 1 6, 1746, the High-
landers found the duke's army marching
towards Inverness, and drew up in order to
prevent it. Both armies halted, each hoping
the other would make the mistake of charging.
At last, about one o'clock, the Highlanders in
the centre and right could be held back no
longer. So eager were they to get at the red-
coats that most of them threw down their
muskets without even firing them, and then
rushed on furiously, sword in hand. * 'Twas

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 25

for a time,' said Wolfe, ' a dispute between
the swords and bayonets, but the latter was
found by far the most destructable [sic]
weapon.' No quarter was given or taken on
either side during an hour of desperate fight-
ing hand to hand. By that time the steady
ranks of the redcoats, aided by the cavalry,
had killed five times as many as they had lost
by the wild slashing of the claymores. The
Highlanders turned and fled. The Stuart cause
was lost for ever.

Again another year of fighting : this time
in Holland, where the British, Dutch, and
Austrians under the Duke of Cumberland met
the French at the village of Laffeldt, on June
21, 1747. Wolfe was now a brigade-major,
which gave him the same sort of position in a
brigade of three battalions as an adjutant has
in a single one ; that is, he was a smart junior
officer picked out to help the brigadier in com-
mand by seeing that orders were obeyed. The
fight was furious. As fast as the British in-
fantry drove back one French brigade another
came forward and drove the British back. The
village was taken and lost, lost and taken, over
and over again. Wolfe, though wounded, kept
up the fight. At last a new French brigade

26 THE WINNING OF CANADA

charged in and swept the British out altogether.
Then the duke ordered the Dutch and Austrians
to advance. But the Dutch cavalry, right in
the centre, were seized with a sudden panic
and galloped back, knocking over their own
men on the way, and making a gap that cer-
tainly looked fatal. But the right man was
ready to fill it. This was Sir John Ligonier,
afterwards commander-in-chief of the British
Army at the time of Wolfe's campaigns in
Canada. He led the few British and Austrian
cavalry, among them the famous Scots Greys,
straight into the gap and on against the dense
masses of the French beyond. These gallant
horsemen were doomed ; and of course they
knew it when they dashed themselves to death
against such overwhelming odds. But they
gained the few precious moments that were
needed. The gap closed up behind them ; and
the army was saved, though they were lost.

During the day Wolfe was several times in
great danger. He was thanked by the duke in
person for the splendid way in which he had
done his duty. The royal favour, however, did
not make him forget the gallant conduct of
his faithful servant, Roland : ' He came to me
at the hazard of his life with offers of his
service, took off my cloak and brought a fresh

THE YOUNG SOLDIER 27

horse ; and would have continued close by me
had I not ordered him to retire. I believe he
was slightly wounded just at that time. Many
a time has he pitched my tent and made the
bed ready to receive me, half-dead with
fatigue.' Nor did Wolfe forget his dumb
friends : ' I have sold my poor little gray
mare. I lamed her by accident, and thought
it better to dismiss her the service immedi-
ately. I grieved at parting with so faithful a
servant, and have the comfort to know she is
in good hands, will be very well fed, and taken
care of in her latter days.'

After recovering from a slight wound re-
ceived at Laffeldt Wolfe was allowed to return
to England, where he remained for the winter.
On the morrow of New Year's Day, 1748, he
celebrated his coming of age at his father's
town house in Old Burlington Street, London.
In the spring, however, he was ordered to re-
join the army, and was stationed with the
troops who were guarding the Dutch frontier.
The war came to an end in the same year,
and Wolfe went home. Though then only
twenty-one, he was already an experienced
soldier, a rising officer, and a marked man.

CHAPTER III

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE
1748-1755

WOLFE was made welcome in England wher-
ever he went. In spite of his youth his name
was well known to the chief men in the Army,
and he was already a hero among the friends
of his family. By nature he was fond of the
society of ladies, and of course he fell in love.
He had had a few flirtations before, like most
other soldiers ; but this time the case was
serious. The difference was the same as
between a sham fight and a battle. His
choice fell on Elizabeth Lawson, a maid of
honour to the Princess of Wales. The oftener
he saw her the more he fell in love with her.
But the course of true love did not, as we shall
presently see, run any more smoothly for him
than it has for many another famous man.

In 1749, when Wolfe was only twenty- two,
he was promoted major of the 2oth Regiment
of Foot. He joined it in Scotland, where he

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 29

was to serve for the next few years. At first
he was not very happy in Glasgow. He did
not like the people, as they were very different
from the friends with whom he had grown up.
Yet his loneliness only added to his zeal for
study. He had left school when still very
young, and he now found himself ignorant
of much that he wished to know. As a
man of the world he had found plenty of
gaps in his general knowledge. Writing to
his friend Captain Rickson, he says : ' When
a man leaves his studies at fifteen, he will
never be justly called a man of letters. I am
endeavouring to repair the damages of my
education, and have a person to teach me Latin
and mathematics.' From his experience in
his own profession, also, he had learned a good
deal. In a letter to his father he points out
what excellent chances soldiers have to see
the vivid side of many things : ' That variety
incident to a military life gives our pro-
fession some advantages over those of a more
even nature. We have all our passions and
affections aroused and exercised, many of
which must have wanted their proper employ-
ment had not suitable occasions obliged us
to exert them. Few men know their own
courage till danger proves them, or how far

30 THE WINNING OF CANADA

the love of honour or dread of shame are
superior to the love of life. This is a knowledge
to be best acquired in an army ; our actions
are there in presence of the world, to be fully
censured or approved.*

Great commanders are always keen to learn
everything really worth while. It is only
the little men who find it a bore. Of course,
there are plenty of little men in a regiment,
as there are everywhere else in the world ;
and some of the officers were afraid Wolfe
would insist on their doing as he did. But he
never preached. He only set the example,
and those who had the sense could follow
it. One of his captains wrote home : ' Our
acting colonel here is a paragon. He neither
drinks, curses, nor gambles. So we make him
our pattern.* After a year with him the
officers found him a ' jolly good fellow ' as
well as a pattern ; and when he became their
lieutenant-colonel at twenty-three they gave
him a dinner that showed he was a prime
favourite among them. He was certainly
quite as popular with the men. Indeed, he
soon became known by a name which speaks
for itself — * the soldier's friend.'

By and by Wolfe's regiment marched
into the Highlands, where he had fought

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 31

against Prince Charlie in the '45. But he
kept in touch with what was going on in
the world outside. He wrote to Rickson
at Halifax, to find out for him all he could
about the French and British colonies in
America. In the same letter, written in 1751,
he said he should like to see some Highland
soldiers raised for the king's army and sent
out there to fight. Eight years later he was
to have a Highland regiment among his own
army at Quebec. Other themes filled the
letters to his mother. Perhaps he was think-
ing of Miss Lawson when he wrote : ' I have
a certain turn of mind that favours matrimony
prodigiously. I love children. Two or three
manly sons are a present to the world, and the
father that offers them sees with satisfaction
that he is to live in his successors.' He was
thinking more gravely of a still higher thing
when he wrote on his twenty-fifth birthday,
January 2, 1752, to reassure his mother about
the strength of his religion.

Later on in the year, having secured leave
of absence, he wrote to his mother in the
best of spirits. He asked her to look after all
the little things he wished to have done. ' Mr
Pattison sends a pointer to Blackheath ; if you
will order him to be tied up in your stable, it

32 THE WINNING OF CANADA

will oblige me much. If you hear of a servant
who can dress a wig it will be a favour done
me to engage him. I have another favour
to beg of you and you '11 think it an odd one :
'tis to order some currant jelly to be made in a
crock for my use. It is the custom in Scotland
to eat it in the morning with bread.' Then
he proposed to have a shooting-lodge in the
Highlands, long before any other Englishman
seems to have thought of what is now so
common. * You know what a whimsical sort
of person I am. Nothing pleases me now but
hunting, shooting, and fishing. I have distant
notions of taking a very little house, remote
upon the edge of the forest, merely for sport.'

In July he left the Highlands, which were
then, in some ways, as wild as Labrador is
now. About this time there was a map made
by a Frenchman in Paris which gave all the
chief places in the Lowlands quite rightly, but
left the north of Scotland blank, with the
words ' Unknown land here, inhabited by
the " Iglandaires " ! ' When his leave began
Wolfe went first to Dublin — ' dear, dirty
Dublin,' as it used to be called — where his
uncle, Major Walter Wolfe, was living. He
wrote to his father : * The streets are crowded
with people of a large size and well limbed,

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 33

and the women very handsome. They have
clearer skins, and fairer complexions than the
women in England or Scotland, and are ex-
ceeding straight and well made ' ; which
shows that he had the proper soldier's eye for
every pretty girl. Then he went to London
and visited his parents in their new house at
the corner of Greenwich Park, which stands
to-day very much the same as it was then.
But, wishing to travel, he succeeded, after a
great deal of trouble, in getting leave to go to
Paris. Lord Bury was a friend of his, and Lord
Bury's father, the Earl of Albemarle, was the
British ambassador there. So he had a good
chance of seeing the best of everything. Per-
haps it would be almost as true to say that he
had as good a chance of seeing the worst of
everything. For there were a great many
corrupt and corrupting men and women at
the French court. There was also much
misery in France, and both the corruption and
the misery were soon to trouble New France,
as Canada was then called, even more than
they troubled Old France at home.

Wolfe wished to travel about freely, to see
the French armies at work, and then to go
on to Prussia to see how Frederick the Great
managed his perfectly disciplined army. This

w.c. C

34 THE WINNING OF CANADA

would have been an excellent thing to do.
But it was then a very new thing for an officer
to ask leave to study foreign armies. Moreover,
the chief men in the British Army did not like
the idea of letting such a good colonel go away
from his regiment for a year, even though he
was going with the object of making himself
a still better officer. Perhaps, too, his friends
were just a little afraid that he might join the
Prussians or the Austrians ; for it was not, in
those days, a very strange thing to join the
army of a friendly foreign country. What-
ever the reason, the long leave was refused
and he went no farther than Paris.

Louis XV was then at the height of his
apparent greatness ; and France was a great
country, as it is still. But king and govern-
ment were both corrupt. Wolfe saw this well
enough and remembered it when the next
war broke out. There was a brilliant society
in ' the capital of civilization,' as the people
of Paris proudly called their city ; and there
was a great deal to see. Nor was all of it
bad. He wrote home two days after his
arrival.

The packet [ferry] did not sail that night,
but we embarked at half-an-hour after six

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 35

in the morning and got into Calais at ten.
I never suffered so much in so short a time
at sea. The people [in Paris] seem to be
very sprightly. The buildings are very
magnificent, far surpassing any we have
in London. Mr Selwin has recommended
a French master to me, and in a few days I
begin to ride in the Academy, but must
dance and fence in my own lodgings. Lord
Albemarle [the British ambassador] is
come from Fontainebleau. I have very
good reason to be pleased with the re-
ception I met with. The best amusement
for strangers in Paris is the Opera, a'nd the
next is the playhouse. The theatre, is a
school to acquire the French language, for
which reason I frequent it more than the
other.

In Paris he met young Philip Stanhope, the
boy to whom the Earl of Chesterfield wrote
his celebrated letters; 'but,' says Wolfe, 'I
fancy he is infinitely inferior to his father.'
Keeping fit, as we call it nowadays, seems to
have been Wolfe's first object. He took the
same care of himself as the Japanese officers
did in the Russo-Japanese War ; and for the
same reason, that he might be the better able

36 THE WINNING OF CANADA

to serve his country well the next time she
needed him. Writing to his mother he says :

I am up every morning at or before
seven and fully employed till twelve. Then
I dress and visit, and dine at two. At five
most people go to the public entertain-
ments, which keep you till nine; and at
eleven I am always in bed. This way of
living is directly opposite to the practice
of the place. But no constitution could
go through all. Four or five days in the
week I am up six hours before any other
fine gentleman in Paris. I ride, fence,
dance, and have a master to teach me
French. I succeed much better in fencing
and riding than in the art of dancing, for
they suit my genius better ; and I improve
a little in French. I have no great ac-
quaintance with the French women, nor
am likely to have. It is almost impossible
to introduce one's self among them with-
out losing a great deal of money, which
you know I can't afford ; besides, these
entertainments begin at the time I go to
bed, and I have not health enough to sit
up all night and work all day. The people
here use umbrellas to defend them from

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 37

the sun, and something of the same kind
to secure them from the rain and snow.
I wonder a practice so useful is not intro-
duced into England.

While in Paris Wolfe was asked if he would
care to be military tutor to the Duke of
Richmond, or, if not, whether he knew of any
good officer whom he could recommend. On
this he named Guy Carleton, who became the
young duke's tutor. Three men afterwards
well known in Canada were thus brought
together long before any of them became cele-
brated. The Duke of Richmond went into
Wolfe's regiment. The next duke became a
governor-general of Canada, as Guy Carleton
had been before him. And Wolfe — well, he
was Wolfe!

One day he was presented to King Louis,
from whom, seven years later, he was to
wrest Quebec. * They were all very gracious
as far as courtesies, bows, and smiles go,
for the Bourbons seldom speak to anybody.'
Then he was presented to the clever Marquise
de Pompadour, whom he found having her
hair done up in the way which is still known
by her name to every woman in the world.
It was the regular custom of that time for

38 THE WINNING OF CANADA

great ladies to receive their friends while the
barbers were at work on their hair. ' She is
extremely handsome and, by her conversation
with the ambassador, I judge she must have
a great deal of wit and understanding.' But
it was her court intrigues and her shameless
waste of money that helped to ruin France
and Canada.

In the midst of all these gaieties Wolfe
never forgot the mother whom he thought
'a match for all the beauties.' He sent her
* two black laced hoods and a vestale for the
neck, such as the Queen of France wears.'
Nor did he forget the much humbler people
who looked upon him as ' the soldier's friend.'
He tells his mother that his letters from
Scotland have just arrived, and that ' the
women of the regiment take it into their
heads to write to me sometimes.' Here is
one of their letters, marked on the outside,
' The Petition of Anne White ' :

Collonnell, — Being a True Noble-hearted
Pittyful gentleman and Officer your
Worship will excuse these few Lines
concerning ye husband of ye under-
signed, Sergt. White, who not from his
own fault is not behaving as Hee should

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 39

towards me and his family, although good
and faithfull till the middle of November
last.

We may be sure * Sergt. White ' had to behave
' as Hee should ' when Wolfe returned I

In April, to his intense disgust, Wolfe was
again in Glasgow.

We are all sick, officers and soldiers.
In two days we lost the skin off our faces
with the sun, and the third were shivering
in great coats. My cousin Goldsmith has
sent me the finest young pointer that ever
was seen ; he eclipses Workie, and out-
does all. He sent me a fishing-rod and
wheel at the same time, of his own work-
manship. This, with a salmon-rod from
my uncle Wat, your flies, and my own
guns, put me in a condition to undertake
the Highland sport. We have plays, we
have concerts, we have balls, with dinners
and suppers of the most execrable food
upon earth, and wine that approaches to
poison. The men of Glasgow drink till
they are excessively drunk. The ladies are
cold to everything but a bagpipe — I wrong
them — there is not one that does not melt
away at the sound of money.'

40 THE WINNING OF CANADA

By the end of this year, however, he had
left Scotland for good. He did not like the
country as he saw it. But the times were
greatly against his doing so. Glasgow was
not at all a pleasant place in those narrowly
provincial days for any one who had seen much
of the world. The Highlands were as bad.
They were full of angry Jacobites, who could
never forgive the redcoats for defeating Prince
Charlie. Yet Wolfe was not against the Scots
as a whole ; and we must never forget that
he was the first to recommend the raising of
those Highland regiments which have fought
so nobly in every British war since the mighty
one in which he fell.

During the next year and part of the year
following, 1754-55, Wolfe was at Exeter, where
the entertainments seem to have been more to
his taste than those at Glasgow. A lady who
knew him well at this time wrote : ' He was
generally ambitious to gain a tall, graceful
woman to be his partner, as well as a good
dancer. He seemed emulous to display every
kind of virtue and gallantry that would render
him amiable.'

In 1755 the Seven Years' Peace was coming
to an end in Europe. The shadow of the
Seven Years' War was already falling darkly

THE SEVEN YEARS' PEACE 41

across the prospect in America. Though
Wolfe did not leave for the front till 1757, he
was constantly receiving orders to be ready,
first for one place and then for another. So
early as February 18, 1755, he wrote to his
mother what he then thought might be a fare-
well letter. It is full of the great war ; but
personal affairs of the deeper kind were by no
means forgotten. ' The success of our fleet
in the beginning of the war is of the utmost
importance.' * It will be sufficient comfort to
you both to reflect that the Power which has
hitherto preserved me may, if it be His pleasure,
continue to do so. If not, it is but a few
days more or less, and those who perish in
their duty and the service of their country
die honourably.'

The end of this letter is in a lighter vein.
But it is no less characteristic : it is all about
his dogs. ' You are to have Flurry instead of
Romp. The two puppies I must desire you to
keep a little longer. I can't part with either
of them, but must find good and secure quarters
for them as well as for my friend Caesar, who
has great merit and much good humour. I
have given Sancho to Lord Howe, so that I am
reduced to two spaniels and one pointer.'
It is strange that in the many books about

42

dogs which mention the great men who have
been fond of them — and most great men are
fond of dogs — not one says a word about Wolfe.
Yet ' my friend Caesar, who has great merit
and much good humour,' deserves to be re-
membered with his kind master just as much,
in his way, as that other Caesar, the friend of
Edward VII, who followed his master to the
grave among the kings and princes of a
mourning world.

CHAPTER IV

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR
1756-1763

WOLFE'S Quebec campaign marked the supreme
crisis of the greatest war the British Empire
ever waged : the war, indeed, that made the
Empire. To get a good, clear view of any-
thing so vast, so complex, and so glorious, we
must first look at the whole course of British
history to see how it was that France and
England ever became such deadly rivals. It
is quite wrong to suppose that the French and
British were always enemies, though they have
often been called ' historic ' and ' hereditary '
foes, as if they never could make friends at
all. As a matter of fact, they have had many
more centuries of peace than of war ; and ever
since the battle of Waterloo, in 1815, they have
been growing friendlier year by year. But
this happy state of affairs is chiefly because,
as we now say, their ' vital interests no longer
clash'; that is, they do not both desire the

43

44 THE WINNING OF CANADA

same thing so keenly that they have to fight
for it.

Their vital interests do not clash now. But
they did clash twice in the course of their
history. The first time was when both govern-
ments wished to rule the same parts of the land
of France. The second time was when they
both wished to rule the same parts of the over-
sea world. Each time there was a long series
of wars, which went on inevitably until one
side had completely driven its rival from the
field.

The first long series of wars took place
chiefly in the fourteenth century and is
known to history as the Hundred Years' War.
England held, and was determined to hold,
certain parts of France. France was deter-
mined never to rest till she had won them
for herself. Whatever other things the two
nations were supposed to be fighting about,
this was always the one cause of strife that
never changed and never could change till
one side or other had definitely triumphed.
France won. There were glorious English
victories at Cressy and Agincourt. Edward III
and Henry V were two of the greatest soldiers
of any age. But, though the English often
won the battles, the French won the war.

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 45

The French had many more men, they fought
near their own homes, and, most important
of all, the war was waged chiefly on land.
The English had fewer men, they fought far
away from their homes, and their ships could
not help them much in the middle of the land,
except by bringing over soldiers and food to
the nearest coast. The end of it all was that
the English armies were worn out; and the
French armies, always able to raise more and
more fresh men, drove them, step by step, out
of the land completely.

The second long series of wars took place
chiefly in the eighteenth century. These wars
have never been given one general name ; but
they should be crlled the Second Hundred
Years' War, because that is what they really
were. They were very different from the wars
that made up the first Hundred Years' War,
because this time the fight was for oversea
dominions, not for land in Europe. Of course
navies had a good deal to do with the first
Hundred Years' War and armies with the
second. But the navies were even more im-
portant in the second than the armies in the
first. The Second Hundred Years' War, the
one in which Wolfe did such a mighty deed,
began with the fall of the Stuart kings of

46 THE WINNING OF CANADA

England in 1688 and went on till the battle of
Waterloo in 1815. But the beginning and end
that meant most to the Empire were the naval
battles of La Rogue in 1692 and Trafalgar in
1805. Since Trafalgar the Empire has been
able to keep what it had won before, and to
go on growing as well, because all its different
parts are joined together by the sea, and be-
cause the British Navy has been, from that day
to this, stronger than any other navy in the
world.

How the French and British armies and
navies fought on opposite sides, either alone
or with allies, all over the world, from time
to time, for these hundred and twenty-seven
years ; how all the eight wars with different
names formed one long Second Hundred
Years' War ; and how the British Navy was
the principal force that won the whole of this
war, made the Empire, and gave Canada safety
then, as it gives her safety now — all this is
much too long a story to tell here. But the
gist of it may be told in a very few words, at
least in so far as it concerns the winning of
Canada and the deeds of Wolfe.

The name ' Greater Britain ' is often used
to describe all the parts of the British Empire
which lie outside of the old mother country.

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 47

This ' Greater Britain ' is now so vast and well
established that we are apt to forget those other
empires beyond the seas which, each in its
own day, surpassed the British Empire of the
same period. There was a Greater Portugal,
a Greater Spain, a Greater Holland, and a
Greater France. France and Holland still
have large oversea possessions ; and a whole
new-world continent still speaks the languages
of Spain and Portugal. But none of them
has kept a growing empire oversea as their
British rival has. What made the difference ?
The two things that made all the difference in
the world were freedom and sea-power. We
cannot stop to discuss freedom, because that is
more the affair of statesmen ; but, at the same
time, we must not forget that the side on which
Wolfe fought was the side of freedom. The
point for us to notice here is that all the
freedom and all the statesmen and all the
soldiers put together could never have made
a Greater Britain, especially against all those
other rivals, unless Wolfe's side had also been
the side of sea-power.

Now, sea-power means more than fighting
power at sea ; it means trading power as well.
But a nation cannot trade across the sea against
its rivals if its own ships are captured and

48 THE WINNING OF CANADA

theirs are not. And long before the Second
Hundred Years' War with France the other
sea-trading empires had been gradually giving
way, because in time of war their ships were
always in greater danger than those of the
British were^ After the English Navy had
defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 the
Spaniards began, slowly but surely, to lose
their chance of making a permanent Greater
Spain. After the great Dutch War, when
Blake defeated Van Tromp in 1653, there was
no further chance of a permanent Greater
Holland. And, even before the Dutch War and
the Armada, the Portuguese, who had once
ruled the Indian Ocean and who had conquered
Brazil, were themselves conquered by Spain
and shut out from all chance of establishing a
Greater Portugal.

So the one supreme point to be decided by
the Second Hundred Years' War lay between
only two rivals, France and Britain. Was
there to be a Greater France or a Greater
Britain across the seas ? The answer de-
pended on the rival navies. Of course, it
involved many other elements of national and
Imperial power on both sides. But no other
elements of power could have possibly pre-
vailed against a hostile and triumphant navy.

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 49

Everything that went to make a Greater
France or a Greater Britain had to cross the
sea — men, women, and children, horses and
cattle, all the various appliances a civilized
people must take with them when they settle
in a new country. Every time there was war
there were battles at sea, and these battles
were nearly always won by the British. Every
British victory at sea made it harder for French
trade, because every ship between France and
Greater France ran more risk of being taken,
while every ship between Britain and Greater
Britain stood a better chance of getting safely
through. This affected everything on both
competing sides in America. British business
went on. French business almost stopped
dead. Even the trade with the Indians living
a thousand miles inland was changed in favour
of the British and against the French, as all
the guns and knives and beads and everything
else that the white man offered to the Indian
in exchange for his furs had to come across the
sea, which was just like an enemy's country
to every French ship, but just like her own
to every British one. Thus the victors at sea
grew continually stronger in America, while
the losers grew correspondingly weaker. When
peace came, the French only had time enough

w.c. D

SO THE WINNING OF CANADA

to build new ships and start their trade again
before the next war set them back once
more ; while the British had nearly all their
old ships, all those they had taken from the
French, and many new ones.

But where did Wolfe come in ? He came in
at the most important time and place of all,
and he did the most important single deed
of all. This brings us to the consideration of
how the whole of the Second Hundred Years'
War was won, not by the British Navy alone,
much less by the Army alone, but by the united
service of both, fighting like the two arms of
one body, the Navy being the right arm and
the Army the left. The heart of this whole
Second Hundred Years' War was the Seven
Years' War ; the British part of the Seven
Years' War was then called the ' Maritime
War ' ; and the heart of the ' Maritime War '
was the winning of Canada, in which the
decisive blow was dealt by Wolfe.

We shall see presently how Navy and Army
worked together as a united service in * joint
expeditions ' by sea and land, how Wolfe took
part in two other joint expeditions before he
commanded the land force of the one at
Quebec, and" how the mighty empire-making
statesman, William Pitt, won the day for

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 51

Britain and for Greater Britain, with Lord
Anson at the head of the Navy to help him,
and Saunders in command at the front. It
was thus that the age-long vexed question
of a Greater France or a Greater Britain in
America was finally decided by the sword.
The conquering sword was that of the British
Empire as a whole. But the hand that wielded
it was Pitt ; the hilt was Anson, the blade was
Saunders, and the point was Wolfe.

CHAPTER V

LOUISBOURG
1758

IN 1755 Wolfe was already writing what he
thought were farewell letters before going off
to the war. And that very year the war,
though not formally declared till the next,
actually did break out in America, where a
British army under Braddock, with Washington
as his aide-de-camp, was beaten in Ohio by the
French and Indians. Next year the French,
owing to the failure of Admiral Byng and the
British fleet to assist the garrison, were able
to capture Minorca in the Mediterranean ;
while their new general in Canada, Montcalm,
Wolfe's great opponent, took Oswego. The
triumph of the French fleet at Minorca made
the British people furious. Byng was court-
martialled, found guilty of failure to do his
utmost to save Minorca, and condemned to
death. In spite of Pitt's efforts to save him,
the sentence was carried out and he was shot

58

WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM
From the National Portrait Gallery

LOUISBOURG 53

on the quarter-deck of his own flagship. Two
other admirals, Hawke and Saunders, both of
whom were soon to see service with Wolfe,
were then sent out as a ' cargo of courage ' to
retrieve the British position at sea. By this
time preparations were being hurried forward
on every hand. Fleets were fitting out. Armies
were mustering. And, best of all, Pitt was
just beginning to make his influence felt.

In 1757, the third year of war, things still
went badly for the British at the front. In
America Montcalm took Fort William Henry,
and a British fleet and army failed to accomplish
anything against Louisbourg. In Europe an-
other British fleet and army were fitted out to
go on another joint expedition, this time against
Rochefort, a great seaport in the west of
France. The senior staff officer, next to the
three generals in command, was Wolfe, now
thirty years of age. The admiral in charge of
the fleet was Hawke, as famous a fighter as
Wolfe himself. A little later, when both these
great men were known throughout the whole
United Service, as well as among the millions
in Britain and in Greater Britain, their names
were coupled in countless punning toasts, and
patriots from Canada to Calcutta would stand
up to drink a health to ' the eye of a Hawke

54 THE WINNING OF CANADA

and the heart of a Wolfe.' But Wolfe was not
a general yet; and the three pottering old
men who were generals at Rochefort could not
make up their minds to do anything but talk.
These generals had been ordered to take
Rochefort by complete surprise. But after
spending five days in front of it, so that every
Frenchman could see what they had come for,
they decided to countermand the attack and
sail home.

Wolfe was a very angry and disgusted man.
Yet, though this joint expedition was a dis-
graceful failure, he had learned some useful
lessons, which he was presently to turn to good
account. He saw, at least, what such ex-
peditions should not attempt ; and that a
general should act boldly, though wisely, with
the fleet. More than this, he had himself
made a plan which his generals were too timid
to carry out ; and this plan was so good that
Pitt, now in supreme control for the next four
years, made a note of it and marked him down
for promotion and command.

Both came sooner than any one could have
expected. Pitt was sick of fleets and armies
that did nothing but hold councils of war and
then come back to say that the enemy could
not be safely attacked. He made up his mind

LOUISBOURG 55

to send out real fighters with the next joint
expedition. So in 1758 he appointed Wolfe
as the junior of the three brigadier-generals
under Amherst, who was to join Admiral
Boscawen — nicknamed ' Old Dreadnought ' —
in a great expedition meant to take Louisbourg
for good and all.

Louisbourg was the greatest fortress in
America. It was in the extreme east of
Canada, on the island of Cape Breton, near the
best fishing-grounds, and on the flank of the
ship channel into the St Lawrence. A fortress
there, in which French fleets could shelter
safely, was like a shield for New France and
a sword against New England. In 1745, just
before the outbreak of the Jacobite rebellion
in Scotland, an army of New Englanders under
Sir William Pepperrell, with the assistance of
Commodore Warren's fleet, had taken this
fortress. But at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1748, when Wolfe had just come of age, it
was given back to France.

Ten years later, when Wolfe went out to join
the second army that was sent against it,
the situation was extremely critical. Both
French and British strained every nerve, the
one to hold, the other to take, the greatest
fortress in America. A French fleet sailed

56 THE WINNING OF CANADA

from Brest in the spring and arrived safely.
But it was not nearly strong enough to
attempt a sea-fight off Louisbourg, and three
smaller fleets that were meant to join it were
all smashed up off the coast of France by the
British, who thus knew, before beginning the
siege, that Louisbourg could hardly expect any
help from outside. Hawke was one of the
British smashers this year. The next year
he smashed up a much greater force in
Quiberon Bay, and so made ' the eye of
a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe ' work
together again, though they were thousands
of miles apart and one directed a fleet while
the other inspired an army.

The fortress of Louisbourg was built beside
a fine harbour with an entrance still further
defended by a fortified island. It was garri-
soned by about four thousand four hundred
soldiers. Some of these were hired Germans,
who cared nothing for the French ; and the
French-Canadian and Indian irregulars were
not of much use at a regular siege. The British
admiral Boscawen had a large fleet, and General
Amherst an army twelve thousand strong.
Taking everything into account, by land and
sea, the British united service at the siege was
quite three times as strong as the French

LOUISBOURG 57

united service. But the French ships, manned
by three thousand sailors, were in a good
harbour, and they and the soldiers were de-
fended by thick walls with many guns. Be-
sides, the whole defence was conducted by
Drucour, as gallant a leader as ever drew
sword.

Boscawen was chosen by Pitt for the same
reason as Wolfe had been, because he was a
fighter. He earned his nickname of ' Old
Dreadnought ' from the answer he made one
night in the English Channel when the officer
of the watch called him to say that two big
French ships were bearing down on his single
British one. ' What are we to do, sir ? *
asked the officer. ' Do ? ' shouted Boscawen,
springing out of his berth, ' Do ? — Why, damn
'em, fight 'em, of course ! ' And they did.
Amherst was the slow-and-sure kind of
general ; but he had the sense to know a good
man when he saw one, and to give Wolfe the
chance of trying his own quick-and-sure way
instead.

A portion of the British fleet under
Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Hardy had been
cruising off Louisbourg for some time before
Boscawen's squadron hove in sight on June 2.
This squadron was followed by more than

58 THE WINNING OF CANADA

twice its own number of ships carrying the
army. All together, there were a hundred
and fifty-seven British vessels, besides Hardy's
covering squadron. Of course, the men could
not be landed under the fire of the fortress.
But two miles south of it, and running west-
ward from it for many miles more, was Gabarus
Bay with an open beach. For several days the
Atlantic waves dashed against the shore so
furiously that no boat could live through
their breakers. But on the eighth the three
brigades of infantry made for three different
points,1 respectively two, three, and four miles
from the fortress. The French sent out half
the garrison to shoot down the first boatloads
that came in on the rollers. To cover the land-
ing, some of Boscawen's ships moved in as
close as they could and threw shells inshore :
but without dislodging the enemy.

Each of the three brigades had its own flag
— one red, another blue, and the third white.
Wolfe's brigade was the red, the one farthest
west from Louisbourg, and Wolfe's did the
fighting. While the boats rose and fell on the
gigantic rollers and the enemy's cannon roared
and the waves broke in thunder on the beach,

1 White Point, Flat Point, and Kennington Cove. See the
accompanying Map of the siege.

2 .1

i

W

LOUISBOURG 59

Wolfe was standing up in the stern-sheets,
scanning every inch of the ground to see if
there was no place where a few men could get
a footing and keep it till the rest had landed.
He had first-rate soldiers with him : grenadiers,
Highlanders, and light infantry.

The boats were now close in, and the French
were firing cannon and muskets into them
right and left. One cannon-ball whizzed
across Wolfe's own boat and smashed his
flagstaff to splinters. Just then three young
light infantry officers saw a high ledge of
rocks, under shelter of which a few men could
form up. Wolfe, directing every movement
with his cane, like Gordon in China a century
later, shouted to the others to follow them ; and
then, amid the crash of artillery and the wild
welter of the surf, though many boats were
smashed and others upset, though some men
were shot and others drowned, the landing was
securely made. ' Who were the first ashore ? '
asked Wolfe, as the men were forming up
under the ledge. Two Highlanders were pointed
out. ' Good fellows ! ' he said, as he went up
to them and handed each a guinea.

While the ranks were forming on the beach,
the French were firing into them and men were
dropping fast. But every gap was closed as soon

6o THE WINNING OF CANADA

as it was made. Directly Wolfe saw he had
enough men he sprang to the front ; where-
upon they all charged after him, straight at
the batteries on the crest of the rising shore.
Here there was some wild work for a minute
or two, with swords, bayonets, and muskets all
hard at it. But the French now saw, to their
dismay, that thousands of other redcoats were
clambering ashore, nearer in to Louisbourg,
and that these men would cut them off if they
waited a moment longer. So they turned and
ran, hotly pursued, till they were safe in under
the guns of the fortress. A deluge of shot and
shell immediately belched forth against the
pursuing British, who wisely halted just out of
range.

After this exciting commencement Amherst's
guns, shot, shell, powder, stores, food, tents,
and a thousand other things had all to be
landed on the surf-lashed, open beach. It
was the sailors' stupendous task to haul the
whole of this cumbrous material up to the
camp. The bluejackets, however, were not
the only ones to take part in the work, for the
ships' women also turned to, with the best of a
gallant goodwill. In a few days all the material
was landed; and Amherst, having formed his
camp, sat down to conduct the siege.

LOUISBOURG 61

Louisbourg harbour faces east, runs in west-
ward nearly a mile, and is over two miles from
north to south. The north and south points,
however, on either side of its entrance, are
only a mile apart. On the south point stood
the fortress ; on the north the lighthouse ;
and between were several islands, rocks, and
bars that narrowed the entrance for ships to
only three cables, or a little more than six
hundred yards. Wolfe saw that the north
point, where the lighthouse stood, was unde-
fended, and might be seized and used as a
British battery to smash up the French batteries
on Goat Island at the harbour mouth. Acting
on this idea, he marched with twelve hundred
men across the stretch of country between the
British camp and the lighthouse. The fleet
brought round his guns and stores and all
other necessaries by sea. A tremendous
bombardment then silenced every French
gun on Goat Island. This left the French
nothing for their defence but the walls of
Louisbourg itself.

Both French and British soon realized that
the fall of Louisbourg was only a question
of time. But time was everything to both.
The British were anxious to take Louisbourg
and then sail up to Quebec and take it by

62 THE WINNING OF CANADA

a sudden attack while Montcalm was en-
gaged in fighting Abercromby's army on Lake
Champlain. The French, of course, were
anxious to hold out long enough to prevent
this ; and Drucour, their commandant at
Louisbourg, was just the man for their purpose.
His wife, too, was as brave as he. She used
to go round the batteries cheering up the
gunners, and paying no more attention to the
British shot and shell than if they had been
only fireworks. On June 18, just before
Wolfe's lighthouse batteries were ready to
open fire, Madame Drucour set sail in the
venturesome Echo, a little French man-
of-war that was making a dash for it, in
the hope of carrying the news to Quebec.
But after a gallant fight the Echo had to
haul down her colours to the Juno and the
Sutherland. We shall hear more of the
Sutherland at the supreme moment of Wolfe's
career.

Nothing French, not even a single man,
could now get into or out of Louisbourg. But
Drucour still kept the flag up, and sent out
parties at night to harass his assailants. One
of these surprised a British post, killed Lord
Dundonald who commanded it, and retired
safely after being almost cut off by British re-

LOUISBOURG 63

inforcements. Though Wolfe had silenced the
island batteries and left the entrance open
enough for Boscawen to sail in, the admiral
hesitated because he thought he might lose
too many ships by risking it. Then the French
promptly sank some of their own ships at the
entrance to keep him out. But six hundred
British sailors rowed in at night and boarded
and took the only two ships remaining afloat.
The others had been blown up a month before
by British shells fired by naval gunners from
Amherst's batteries. Drucour was now in a
terrible plight. Not a ship was left. He was
completely cut off by land and sea. Many
of his garrison were dead, many more were
lying sick or wounded. His foreigners were
ready for desertion. His French Canadians
had grown down-hearted. All the non-com-
batants wished him to surrender at once.
What else could he do but give in ? On
July 27 he hauled down the fleurs-de-lis from
the great fortress. But he had gained his
secondary object ; for it was now much too
late in the year for the same British force to
begin a new campaign against Quebec.

Wolfe, like Nelson and Napoleon, was never
content to ' let well enough alone,' if any-
thing better could possibly be done. When

64 THE WINNING OF CANADA

the news came of Montcalm's great victory
over Abercromby at Ticonderoga, he told
Amherst he was ready to march inland at
once with reinforcements. And after Louis-
bourg had surrendered and Boscawen had
said it was too late to start for Quebec, he
again volunteered to do any further service
that Amherst required. The service he was
sent on was the soldier's most disgusting duty ;
but he did it thoroughly, though he would
have preferred anything else. He went with
Hardy's squadron to destroy the French settle-
ments along the Gulf of St Lawrence, so as to
cut off their supplies from thfe French in Quebec
before the next campaign.

After Rochefort Wolfe had become a marked
man. After Louisbourg he became an Imperial
hero. The only other the Army had yet pro-
duced in this war was Lord Howe, who had
been killed in a skirmish just before Ticon-
deroga. Wolfe knew Howe well, admire4 him
exceedingly, and called him ' the noblest
Englishman that has appeared in my time, and
the best soldier in the army.' He would have
served under him gladly. But Howe — young,
ardent, gallant, yet profound — was dead ; and
the hopes of discerning judges were centred

LOUISBOURG 65

on Wolfe. The war had not been going well,
and this victory at Louisbourg was the first
that the British people could really rejoice over
with all their heart.

The British colonies went wild with delight.
Halifax had a state ball, at which Wolfe
danced to his heart's content ; while his
unofficial partners thought themselves the
luckiest girls in all America to be asked by
the hero of Louisbourg. Boston and Phila-
delphia had large bonfires and many fireworks.
The chief people of New York attended a gala
dinner. Every church had special thanks-
givings.

In England the excitement was just as great,
and Wolfe's name and fame flew from lip to
lip all over the country. Parliament passed
special votes of thanks. Medals were struck
to celebrate the event. The king stood on his
palace steps to receive the captured colours,
which were carried through London in triumph
by the Guards and the Household Brigade.
And Pitt, the greatest — and, in a certain
sense, the only — British statesman who has
ever managed people, parliament, govern-
ment, navy, and army, all together, in a
world-wide Imperial war — Pitt, the eagle-
eyed and lion-hearted, at once marked Wolfe

w.c. E

66 THE WINNING OF CANADA

down again for higher promotion and, this
time, for the command of an army of his own.
And ever since the Empire Year of 1759 the
world has known that Pitt was right.

CHAPTER VI

QUEBEC
1759

IN October 1758 Wolfe sailed from Halifax
for England with Boscawen and very nearly
saw a naval battle off Land's End with the
French fleet returning to France from Quebec.
The enemy, however, slipped away in the dark.
On November I he landed at Portsmouth. He
had been made full colonel of a new regiment,
the 67th Foot (Hampshires), and before going
home to London he set off to see it at Salisbury.1
Wolfe's old regiment, the 2oth (Lancashire
Fusiliers), was now in Germany, fighting
under the command of Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick, and was soon to win more laurels
at Minden, the first of the three great British

1 Ten years later a Russian general saw this regiment at
Minorca and was loud in his praise of its all-round excellence,
when Wolfe's successor in the colonelcy, Sir James Campbell,
at once said : ' The only merit due to me is the strictness with
which I have followed the system introduced by the hero of
Quebec.'

67

68 THE WINNING OF CANADA

victories of 1759 — Minden, Quebec, anc
Quiberon.

Though far from well, Wolfe was as keen
ever about anything that could possibly make
him fit for command. He picked out the best
officers with a sure eye : generals and colonels
like Carleton; captains, like Delaune, a mat
made for the campaigns in Canada, who,
we shall see later, led the ' Forlorn Hope
up the Heights of Abraham. Wolfe had alsc
noted in a third member of the great Howe
family a born leader of light infantry for
Quebec. Wolfe was very strong on light
infantry, and trained them to make sudden
dashes with a very short but sharp surprise
attack followed by a quick retreat under cover.
One day at Louisbourg an officer said this
reminded him of what Xenophon wrote about
the Carduchians who harassed the rear of the
world-famous ' Ten Thousand.' * I had it
from Xenophon ' was Wolfe's reply. Like all
great commanders, Wolfe knew what other
great commanders had done and thought, no
matter to what age or nation they belonged :
Greek, Roman, German, French, British, or
any other. Years before this he had recom-
mended a young officer to study the Prussian
Army Regulations and Vauban's book on

QUEBEC 69

Sieges. Nor did he forget to read the lives
of men like Scanderbeg and Ziska, who could
teach him many unusual lessons. He kept his
eyes open everywhere, all his life long, on men
and things and books. He recommended his
friend, Captain Rickson, who was then in
Halifax, to read Montesquieu's not yet
famous book The Spirit of Laws, because it
would be useful for a government official in a
new country. Writing home to his mother
from Louisbourg about this new country, that
is, before Canada had become British, before
there was much more than a single million
of English-speaking people in the whole New
World, and before most people on either side
of the Atlantic understood what a great over-
sea empire meant at all, he said : ' This will,
sometime hence, be a vast empire, the seat
of power and learning. Nature has refused
them nothing, and there will grow a people out
of our little spot, England, that will fill this vast
space, and divide this great portion of the globe
with the Spaniards, who are possessed of the
other half of it.'

On arriving in England Wolfe had reported
his presence to the commander-in-chief, Lord
Ligonier, requesting leave of absence in order
that he might visit his relatives. This was

70 THE WINNING 'OF CANADA

granted, and the Wolfe family met together
once more and for the last time.

Though he said little about it, Wolfe must
have snatched some time for Katherine
Lowther, his second love, to whom he was
now engaged. What had happened between
him and his first love, Miss Lawson, will
probably never be known. We know thatx
his parents were opposed to his marrying
her. Perhaps, too, she may not have been
as much in love as he was. But, for what-
ever reason, they parted. Then he fell in love
with beautiful Katherine Lowther, a sister to
the Earl of Lonsdale and afterwards Duchess
of Bolton.

Meanwhile Pitt was planning for his
Empire Year of 1759, the year of Ferdinand
at Minden, Wolfe at Quebec, and Hawke in
Quiberon Bay. Before Pitt had taken the war
in hand nearly everything had gone against
the British. Though Clive had become the
British hero of India in 1/57, and Wolfe of
Louisbourg in 1758, there had hitherto been
more defeats than victories. Minorca had
been lost in 1756 ; in America Braddock's army
had been destroyed in 1755 ; and Montcalm
had won victories at Oswego in 1756, at Fort
William Henry in 1757, and at Ticonderoga in

QUEBEC 71

1758. More than this, in 1759 the French
were preparing fleets and armies to invade
England, Ireland, and Scotland ; and the
British people were thinking rather of their
own defence at home than of attacking the
French abroad.

Pitt, however, rightly thought that vigorous
attacks from the sea were the best means of
defence at home. From London he looked
out over the whole world : at France and her
allies in the centre, at French India on his far
left, and at French Canada on his far right ;
with the sea dividing his enemies and uniting
his friends, if only he could hold its highways
with the British Navy.

To carry out his plans Pitt sent a small
army and a great deal of money to Frederick
the Great, to help him in the middle of Europe
against the Russians, Austrians, and French.
At the same time he let Anson station fleets
round the coast of France, so that no strong
French force could get at Britain or Greater
Britain, or go to help Greater France, without
a fight at sea. Then, having cut off Canada
from France and taken her outpost at Louis-
bourg, he aimed a death-blow at her very
heart by sending Saunders, with a quarter of
the whole British Navy, against Quebec, the

72 THE WINNING OF CANADA

stronghold of New France, where the land
attack was to be made by a little army of 9000
men under Wolfe. Even this was not the
whole of Pitt's plan for the conquest of Canada.
A smaller army was to be sent against the
French on the Great Lakes, and a larger one,
under Amherst, along the line of Lake Champ-
lain, towards Montreal.

Pitt did a very bold thing when he took a
young colonel and asked the king to make him
a general and allow him to choose his own
brigadiers and staff officers. It was a bold
thing, because, whenever there is a position of
honour to be given, the older men do not like
being passed over and all the politicians who
think of themselves first and their country
afterwards wish to put in their own favourites.
Wolfe, of course, had enemies. Dullards often
think that men of genius are crazy, and some
one had told the king that Wolfe was mad.
' Mad, is he ? ' said the king, remembering all
the recent British defeats on land ; ' then I
hope he '11 bite some of my other generals ! '
Wolfe was not able to give any of his seniors
his own and Lord Howe's kind of divine ' mad-
ness ' during that war. But he did give a touch
of it to many of his juniors ; with the result
that his Quebec army was better officered

QUEBEC 73

than any other British land force of the
time.

The three brigadiers next in command to
Wolfe — Monckton, Townshend, and Murray —
were not chosen simply because they were all
sons of peers, but because, like Howe and
Boscawen, they were first-rate officers as well.
Barre and Carleton were the two chief men on
the staff. Each became celebrated in later
days, Barre in parliament, and Carleton as
both the saviour of Canada from the American
attack in 1775 and the first British governor-
general. Williamson, the best gunnery expert
in the whole Army, commanded the artillery.
The only troublesome officer was Townshend,
who thought himself, and whose family and
political friends thought him, at least as good
a general as Wolfe, if not a better one. But
even Townshend did his duty well. The army
at Halifax was supposed to be twelve thousand,
but its real strength was only nine thousand.
The difference was mostly due to the ravages
of scurvy and camp fever, both of which, in
their turn, were due to the bad food supplied
by rascally contractors. The action of the
officers alone saved the situation from becoming
desperate. Indeed, if it had not been for what
the officers did for their men in the way of

74 THE WINNING OF CANADA

buying better food, at great cost, out of their
own not well-filled pockets, there might have
been no army at all to greet Wolfe on his
arrival in America.

The fleet was the greatest that had ever
sailed across the seas. It included one-quarter
of the whole Royal Navy. There were 49
men-of-war manned by 14,000 sailors and
marines. There were also more than 200
vessels — transports, store ships, provision ships,
etc. — manned by about 7000 merchant seamen.
Thus there were at least twice as many sailors
as soldiers at the taking of Quebec. Saunders
was a most capable admiral. He had been flag-
lieutenant during Anson's famous voyage
round the world; then Hawke's best fighting
captain during the war in which Wolfe was
learning his work at Dettingen and Laffeldt ;
and then Hawke's second-in-command of the
* cargo of courage ' sent out after Byng's dis-
grace at Minorca. After Quebec he crowned
his fine career by being one of the best first
lords of the Admiralty that ever ruled the
Navy. Durell, his next in command, was
slower than Amherst; and Amherst never
made a short cut in his life, even to certain
success. Holmes, the third admiral, was
thoroughly efficient. Hood, a still better

QUEBEC 75

admiral than any of those at Quebec, after-
wards served under Holmes, and Nelson under
Hood ; which links Trafalgar with Quebec.
But a still closer link with ' mighty Nelson '
was Jervis, who took charge of Wolfe's personal
belongings at Quebec the night before the
battle and many years later became Nelson's
commander-in-chief. Another Quebec captain
who afterwards became a great admiral was
Hughes, famous for his fights in India. But
the man whose subsequent fame in the world
at large eclipsed that of any other in this fleet
was Captain Cook, who made the first good
charts of Canadian waters some years before
he became a great explorer in the far Pacific.

There was a busy scene at Portsmouth on
February 17, when Saunders and Wolfe sailed
in the flagship H.M.S. Neptune, of 90 guns and
a crew of 750 men. She was one of the well-
known old ' three-deckers,' those ' wooden
walls of England ' that kept the Empire safe
while it was growing up. The guard of red-
coated marines presented arms, and the
hundreds of bluejackets were all in their places
as the two commanders stepped on board.
The naval officers on the quarter-deck were
very spick and span in their black three-
cornered hats, white wigs, long, bright blue,

76

gold-laced coats, white waistcoats and breeches
and stockings, and gold-buckled shoes. The
idea of having naval uniforms of blue and
white and gold — the same colours that are
worn to-day — came from the king's seeing the
pretty Duchess of Bedford in a blue-and-white
riding-habit, which so charmed him that he
swore he would make the officers wear the
same colours for the uniforms just then being
newly tried. This was when the Duke of
Bedford was first lord of the Admiralty, some
years before Pitt's great expedition against
Quebec.

The sailors were also in blue and white ;
but they were not so spick and span as the
officers. They were a very rough-and-ready-
looking lot. They wore small, soft, three-
cornered black hats, bright blue jackets,
open enough to show their coarse white
shirts, and coarse white duck trousers. They
had shoes without stockings on shore, and
only bare feet on board. They carried cut-
lasses and pistols, and wore their hair in
pigtails. They would be a surprising sight
to modern eyes. But not so much so as the
women 1 Ships and regiments in those days
always had a certain number of women for
washing and mending the clothes. There

QUEBEC 77

was one woman to about every twenty men.
They drew pay and were under regular orders,
just like the soldiers and sailors. Sometimes
they gave a willing hand in action, helping the
1 powder-monkeys ' — boys who had to pass
the powder from the barrels to the gunners —
or even taking part in a siege, as at Louisbourg.
The voyage to Halifax was long, rough,
and cold, and Wolfe was sea-sick as ever.
Strangely enough, these ships coming out to
the conquest of Canada under St George's cross
made land on St George's Day near the place
where Cabot had raised St George's cross over
Canadian soil before Columbus had set foot
on the mainland of America. But though
April 23 might be a day of good omen, it was
a very bleak one that year off Cape Breton,
where ice was packed for miles and miles
along the coast. On the 3Oth the fleet entered
Halifax. Slow old Durell was hurried off on
May 5 with eight men-of-war and seven
hundred soldiers under Carleton to try to stop
any French ships from getting up to Quebec.
Carleton was to go ashore at Isle-aux-Coudres,
an island commanding the channel sixty miles
below Quebec, and mark out a passage for the
fleet through the ' Traverse ' at the lower end
of the island of Orleans, thirty miles higher up.

78 THE WINNING OF CANADA

On the 1 3th Saunders sailed for Louisbourg,
where the whole expedition was to meet and
get ready. Here Wolfe spent the rest of May,
working every day and all day. His army,
with the exception of nine hundred American
rangers, consisted of seasoned British regulars,
with all the weaklings left behind ; and it
did his heart good to see them on parade.
There was the I5th, whose officers still wear a
line of black braid on their uniforms in mourn-
ing for his death. The I5th and five other
regiments — the 28th, 43rd, 47th, 48th, and
58th — were English. But the 35th had been
forty years in Ireland, and was Irish to a man.
The whole seven regiments were dressed very
much alike : three-cornered, stiff black hats
with black cockades, white wigs, long-tailed
red coats turned back with blue or white in
front, where they were fastened only at the
neck, white breeches, and long white gaiters
coming over the knee. A very different corps
was the 78th, or ' Eraser's,' Highlanders, one
of the regiments Wolfe first recommended and
Pitt first raised. Only fourteen years before
the Quebec campaign these same Highland-
ers had joined Prince Charlie, the Young
Pretender, in the famous ' '45.' They were
mostly Roman Catholics, which accounts for

QUEBEC 79

the way they intermarried with the French
Canadians after the conquest. They had been
fighting for the Stuarts against King George,
and Wolfe, as we have seen, had himself fought
against them at Culloden. Yet here they were
now, under Wolfe, serving King George. They
knew that the Stuart cause was lost for ever ;
and all of them, chiefs and followers alike,
loved the noble profession of arms. The
Highlanders then wore ' bonnets ' like a high
tam-o'-shanter, with one white curly feather
on the left side. Their red coats were faced
with yellow, and they wore the Fraser plaid
hung from the shoulders and caught up,
loopwise, on both hips. Their kilts were very
short and not pleated. Badger sporrans, show-
ing the head in the middle, red-and-white-
diced hose, and buckled ^brogues completed
their wild but martial dress, which was well
set off by the dirks and claymores that swung
to the stride of the mountaineer.

Each regiment had one company of gren-
adiers, picked out for their size, strength, and
steadiness, and one company of light infantry,
picked out for their quickness and good marks-
manship. Sometimes all the grenadier com-
panies would be put together in a separate
battalion. The same thing was often done

8o THE WINNING OF CANADA

with the light infantry companies, which were
then led by Colonel Howe. Wolfe had also
made up a small three-company battalion
of picked grenadiers from the five regiments
that were being left behind at Louisbourg to
guard the Maritime Provinces. This little
battalion became famous at Quebec as the
* Louisbourg Grenadiers.' The grenadiers all
wore red and white, like the rest, except that
their coats were buttoned up the whole way,
and instead of the three-cornered hats they
wore high ones like a bishop's mitre. The
artillery wore blue-grey coats turned back with
red, yellow braid, and half-moon-shaped black
hats, with the points down towards their
shoulders.

The only remaining regiment is of much
greater interest in connection with a Canadian
campaign. It was the 6oth Foot, then called
the Royal Americans, afterwards the Sixtieth
Rifles or ' Old Sixtieth,' and now the King's
Royal Rifle Corps. It was the first regiment
of regulars ever raised in Greater Britain, and
the first to introduce the rifle-green uniform
now known all over the Empire, especially in
Canada, where all rifle regiments still follow
' the 6oth's ' lead so far as that is possible.
Many of its officers and men who returned

QUEBEC 8 i

from the conquest of Canada to their homes in
the British colonies were destined to move on
to Canada with their families as United Empire
Loyalists. This was their first war ; and they
did so well in it that Wolfe gave them the rifle-
man's motto they still bear in token of their
smartness and dash — Celer et Audax. Un-
fortunately they did not then wear the famous
' rifle green ' but the ordinary red. Un-
fortunately, too, the rifleman's green has no
connection with the ' green jackets of American
backwoodsmen in the middle of the eighteenth
century.' The backwoodsmen were not
dressed in green as a rule, and they never
formed any considerable part of the regiment
at any time. The first green uniform came in
with the new 5th battalion in 1797 ; and the
old 2nd and 3rd battalions, which fought under
Wolfe, did not adopt it till 1815. It was not
even of British origin, but an imitation of
a German hussar uniform which was itself an
imitation of one worn by the Hungarians, who
have the senior hussars of the world. But
though Wolfe's Royal Americans did not wear
the rifle green, and though their coats and
waistcoats were of common red, their uni-
forms differed from those of all other regi-
ments at Quebec in several particulars. The

w.c. F

82 THE WINNING OF CANADA

most remarkable difference was the absence
of lace, an absence specially authorized only
for this corps, and then only in view of special
service and many bush fights in America. The
double-breasted coats were made to button
across, except at the top, where the lapels
turned back, like the cuffs and coat-tails.
All these * turnbacks ' and the breeches were
blue. The very long gaiters, the waist and
cross belts, the neckerchief and hat piping were
white. Wearing this distinctively plain uni->
form, and led by their buglers and drummers
in scarlet and gold, like state trumpeters, the
Royal Americans could not, even at a distance,
be mistaken for any other regiment.

On June 6 Saunders and Wolfe sailed for
Quebec with a hundred and forty-one ships.
Wolfe's work in getting his army safely off
being over, he sat down alone in his cabin to
make his will. His first thought was for
Katherine Lowther, his fiancee, who was to
have her own miniature portrait, which he
carried with him, set in jewels and given back
to her. Warde, Howe, and Carleton were each
remembered. He left all the residue of his
estate to ' my good mother,' his father having
just died. More than a third of the whole will
was taken up with providing for his ser-

QUEBEC 83

vants. No wonder he was called * the soldier's
friend.'

There was a thrilling scene at Louisbourg
as regiment after regiment marched down to
the shore, with drums beating, bugles sound-
ing, and colours flying. Each night, after
drinking the king's health, they had drunk
another toast — ' British colours on every
French fort, port, and garrison in North
America.' Now here they were, the pick of
the Army and Navy, off with Wolfe to raise
those colours over Quebec, the most import-
ant military point on the whole continent.
On they sailed, all together, till they reached
the Saguenay, a hundred and twenty miles
below Quebec. Here, on the afternoon of
June 20, the sun shone down on a sight
such as the New World had never seen before,
and has never seen again. The river narrows
opposite the Saguenay and is full of shoals and
islands ; so this was the last day the whole
one hundred and forty-one vessels sailed to-
gether, in their three divisions, under those
three ensigns — 'The Red, White, and Blue* —
which have made the British Navy loved,
feared, and famous round the seven seas.
What a sight it was I Thousands and thou-
sands of soldiers and sailors crowded those

84 THE WINNING OF CANADA

scores and scores of high-decked ships ; while
hundreds and hundreds of swelling sails
gleamed white against the sun, across the
twenty miles of blue St Lawrence.

Wolfe, however, was not there to see it. He
had gone forward the day before. A dispatch-
boat had come down from Durell to say that,
in spite of his advanced squadron, Bougain-
ville, Montcalm's ablest brigadier, had slipped
through with twenty-three ships from France,
bringing out a few men and a good deal of
ammunition, stores, and food. This gave
Quebec some sorely needed help. Besides,
Montcalm had found out Pitt's plan ; and
nobody knew where the only free French
fleet was now. It had wintered in the West
Indies. But had it sailed for France or the
St Lawrence ? At the first streak of dawn on
the 2$rd DurelPs look-out off Isle-aur-Coudres
reported many ships coming up the river under
a press of sail. Could the French West Indian
fleet have slipped in ahead of Saunders, as
Bougainville had slipped in ahead of Durell
himself ? There was a tense moment on
board of DurelPs squadron and in Carleton's
camp, in the pale, grey light of early morning,
as the bugles sounded, the boatswains blew
their whistles and roared their orders, and all

QUEBEC 85

hands came tumbling up from below and ran
to battle quarters with a rush of swift bare feet.
But the incoming vanship made the private
British signal, and both sides knew that all was
well.

For a whole week the great fleet of one hundred
and forty-one ships worked their way through
the narrow channel between Isle-aux-Coudres
and the north shore, and then dared the dangers
of the Traverse, below the island of Orleans,
where the French had never passed more than
one ship at a time, and that only with the
greatest caution. The British went through
quite easily, without a single accident. In two
days the great Captain Cook had sounded and
marked out the channel better than the French
had in a hundred and fifty years ; and so
thoroughly was his work done that the British
officers could handle their vessels in these
French waters better without than with the
French pilots. Old Captain Killick took the
Goodwill through himself, just next ahead of
the Richmond, on board of which was Wolfe.
The captured French pilot in the Goodwill was
sure she would be lost if she did not go slow
and take more care. But Killick laughed at
him and said : ' Damn me, but I '11 convince
you an Englishman can go where a French-

86 THE WINNING CF CANADA

man daren't show his nose 1 ' And he
did.

On June 26 Wolfe arrived at the west end of
the island of Orleans, in full view of Quebec.
The twenty days' voyage from Louisbourg had
ended and the twelve weeks' siege had begun.

At this point we must take the map and
never put it aside till the final battle is over.
A whole book could not possibly make Wolfe's
work plain to any one without the map. But
with the map we can easily follow every move
in this, the greatest crisis in both Wolfe's
career and Canada's history.

What Wolfe saw and found out was enough
to daunt any general. He had a very good
army, but it was small. He could count upon
the help of a mighty fleet, but even British
fleets cannot climb hills or make an enemy
come down and fight. Montcalm, however,
was weakened by many things. The governor,
Vaudreuil, was a vain, fussy, and spiteful fool,
with power enough to thwart Montcalm at
every turn. The intendant, Bigot, was the
greatest knave ever seen in Canada, and the
head of a gang of official thieves who robbed
the country and the wretched French
Canadians right and left. The French army,
all together, numbered nearly seventeen thou-

QUEBEC 87

sand, almost twice Wolfe's own; but the
bulk of it was militia, half starved and
badly armed. Both Vaudreuil and Bigot could
and did interfere disastrously with the five
different forces that should have been made
into one army under Montcalm alone — the
French regulars, the Canadian regulars, the
Canadian militia, the French sailors ashore,
and the Indians. Montcalm had one great
advantage over Wolfe. He was not ex-
pected to fight or manoeuvre in the open
field. His duty was not to drive Wolfe away,
or even to keep Amherst out of Canada. All
he had to do was to hold Quebec throughout
the summer. The autumn would force the
British fleet to leave for ice-free waters. Then,
if Quebec could only be held, a change in the
fortunes of war, or a treaty of peace, might
still keep Canada in French hands. Wolfe had
either to tempt Montcalm out of Quebec or get
into it himself; and he soon realized that he
would have to do this with the help of Saunders
alone ; for Amherst in the south was crawling
forward towards Montreal so slowly that no
aid from him could be expected.

Montcalm 's position certainly looked secure
for the summer. His left flank was guarded
by the Montmorency, a swift river that could

88 THE WINNING OF CANADA

be forded only by a few men at a time in a
narrow place, some miles up, where the dense
bush would give every chance to his Indians
and Canadians. His centre was guarded by en-
trenchments running from the Montmorency
to the St Charles, six miles of ground, rising
higher and higher towards Montmorency, all
of it defended by the best troops and the bulk
of the army, and none of it having an inch of
cover for an enemy in front. The mouth of
the St Charles was blocked by booms and
batteries. Quebec is a natural fortress ; and
above Quebec the high, steep cliffs stretched
for miles and miles. These cliffs could be
climbed by a few men in several places ; but
nowhere by a whole army, if any defenders
were there in force; and the British fleet
could not land an army without being seen
soon enough to draw plenty of defenders to the
same spot. Forty miles above Quebec the
St Lawrence channel narrows to only a quarter
of a mile, and the down current becomes very
swift indeed. Above this channel was the
small French fleet, which could stop a much
larger one trying to get up, or could even block
most of the fairway by sinking some of its
own ships. Besides all these defences of man
and nature the French had floating batteries

QUEBEC 89

along the north shore. They also held the
Levis Heights on the south shore, opposite
Quebec, so that ships crowded with helpless
infantry could not, without terrible risk, run
through the intervening narrows, barely a
thousand yards wide.

A gale blowing down-stream was the first
trouble for the British fleet. Many of the
transports broke loose and a good deal of
damage was done to small vessels and boats.
Next night a greater danger threatened, when
the ebb-tide, running five miles an hour,
brought down seven French fireships, which
suddenly burst into flame as they rounded the
Point of Levy. There was a display of devil's
fireworks such as few men have ever seen or
could imagine. Sizzling, crackling, and roar-
ing, the blinding flames leaped into the jet-
black sky, lighting up the camps of both
armies, where thousands of soldiers watched
these engines of death sweep down on the
fleet. Each of the seven ships was full of
mines, blowing up and hurling shot and shell
in all directions. The crowded mass of British
vessels seemed doomed to destruction. But
the first spurt of fire had hardly been noticed
before the men in the guard boats began to
row to the rescue. Swinging the grappling-

90 THE WINNING OF CANADA

hooks round at arm's length, as if they were
heaving the lead, the bluejackets made the
fireships fast, the officers shouted, ' Give way 1 '
and presently the whole infernal flotilla was
safely stranded. But it was a close thing and
very hot work, as one of the happy-go-lucky
Jack tars said with more force than grace,
when he called out to the boat beside him :
' Hullo, mate ! Did you ever take hell in tow
before ? '

Vaudreuil now made Montcalm, who was
under his orders, withdraw the men from the
Levis Heights, and thus abandon the whole of
the south shore in front of Quebec. Wolfe,
delighted, at once occupied the same place,
with half his army and most of his guns.
Then he seized the far side of the Montmorency
and made his main camp there, without, how-
ever, removing his hospitals and stores from
his camp on the island of Orleans. So he now
had three camps, not divided, but joined to-
gether, by the St Lawrence, where the fleet
could move about between them in spite of
anything the French could do. He then
marched up the Montmorency to the fords,
to try the French strength there, and to find
out if he could cross the river, march down the
open ground behind Montcalm, and attack him

QUEBEC 91

from the rear. But he was repulsed at the first
attempt, and saw that he could do no better
at a second. Meanwhile his Levis batteries
began a bombardment which lasted two months
and reduced Quebec to ruins.

Yet he seemed as far off as ever from
capturing the city. Battering down the houses
of Quebec brought him no nearer to his object,
while Montcalm's main body still stood securely
in its entrenchments down at Beauport. Wolfe
now felt he must try something decisive, even
if desperate; and he planned an attack by
land and water on the French left. Both
French and British were hard at work on
July 31. In the morning Wolfe sent one
regiment marching up the Montmorency, as if
to try the fords again, and another, also in full
view of the French, up along the St Lawrence
from the Levis batteries, as if it was to be taken
over by the ships to the north shore above
Quebec. Meanwhile Monckton's brigade was
starting from the Point of Levy in row-boats,
the Centurion was sailing down to the mouth of
the Montmorency, two armed transports were
being purposely run ashore on the beach at
the top of the tide, and the Pembroke, Trent,
Lowestoff, and Racehorse were taking up
positions to cover the boats. The men-of-

92 THE WINNING OF CANADA

war and Wolfe's batteries at Montmorency
then opened fire on the point he wished to
attack ; and both of them kept it up for eight
hours, from ten till six. All this time the
Levis batteries were doing their utmost against
Quebec. But Montcalm was not to be de-
ceived. He saw that Wolfe intended to storm
the entrenchments at the point at which the
cannon were firing, and he kept the best of his
army ready to defend it.

Wolfe and the Louisbourg Grenadiers were
in the two armed transports when they
grounded at ten o'clock. To his disgust and to
Captain Cook's surprise both vessels stuck fast
in the mud nearly half a mile from shore.
This made the grenadiers' muskets useless
against the advanced French redoubt, which
stood at high-water mark, and which over-
matched the transports, because both of these
had grounded in such a way that they could
not bring their guns to bear in reply. The
stranded vessels soon became a death-trap.
Wolfe's cane was knocked out of his hand by
a cannon ball. Shells were bursting over the
deck, smashing the masts to pieces and send-
ing splinters of wood and iron flying about
among the helpless grenadiers and gunners.
There was nothing to do but order the men

QUEBEC 93

back to the boats and wait. The tide was not
low till four. The weather was scorchingly
hot. A thunderstorm was brewing. The re-
doubt could not be taken. The transports
were a failure. And every move had to be
made in full view of the watchful Montcalm,
whose entrenchments at this point were on the
top of a grassy hill nearly two hundred feet
above the muddy beach.

But Wolfe still thought he might succeed
with the main attack at low tide, although he
had not been able to prepare it at high tide.
His Montmorency batteries seemed to be
pitching their shells very thickly into the
French, and his three brigades of infantry
were all ready to act together at the right
time. Accordingly, for the hottest hours
of that scorching day, Monckton's men
grilled in the boats while Townshend's and
Murray's waited in camp. At four the tide
was low and Wolfe ordered the landing to
begin.

The tidal flats ran out much farther than
any one had supposed. The heavily laden
boats stuck on an outer ledge and had to be
cleared, shoved off, refilled with soldiers, and
brought round to another place. It was now
nearly six o'clock ; and both sides were eager

94 THE WINNING OF CANADA

for the fray. Townshend's and Murray's
brigades had forded the mouth of the Mont-
morency and were marching along to support
the attack, when, suddenly and unexpectedly,
the grenadiers spoiled it all ! Wolfe had ordered
the Louisbourg Grenadiers and the ten other
grenadier companies of the army to form up
and rush the redoubt. But, what with the
cheering of the sailors as they landed the rest
of Monckton's men, and their own eagerness
to come to close quarters at once, the Louis-
bourg men suddenly lost their heads and
charged before everything was ready. The rest
followed them pell-mell ; and in less than five
minutes the redoubt was swarming with excited
grenadiers, while the French who had held it
were clambering up the grassy hill into the
safer entrenchments.

The redoubt was certainly no place to stay
in. It had no shelter towards its rear ; and
dozens of French cannon and thousands of
French muskets were firing into it from the
heights. An immediate retirement was the
only proper course. But there was no holding
the men now. They broke into another mad
charge, straight at the hill. As they reached
it, amid a storm of musket balls and grape-
shot, the heavens joined in with a terrific storm

QUEBEC 95

of their own. The rain burst in a perfect
deluge ; and the hill became almost im-
possible to climb, even if there had been no
enemy pouring death-showers of fire from the
top. When Wolfe saw what was happening
he immediately sent officers running after the
grenadiers to make them come back from the
redoubt, and these officers now passed the word
to retire at once. This time the grenadiers,
all that were left of them, obeyed. Their two
mad rushes had not lasted a quarter of an hour.
Yet nearly half of the thousand men they
started with were lying dead or wounded on
that fatal ground.

Wolfe now saw that he was hopelessly beaten
and that there was not a minute to lose in
getting away. The boats could take only
Monckton's men ; and the rising tide would
soon cut off Townshend's and Murray's from
their camp beyond the mouth of the Mont-
morency. The two stranded transports, from
which he had hoped so much that morning,
were set on fire ; and, under cover of their
smoke and of the curtain of torrential rain,
Monckton's crestfallen men got into their
boats once more. Townshend's and Murray's
brigades, enraged at not being brought into
action, turned to march back by the way they

96 THE WINNING OF CANADA

had come so eagerly only an hour before.
They moved off in perfect order ; but, as
they left the battlefield, they waved their
hats in defiance at the jeering Frenchmen,
challenging them to come down and fight it
out with bayonets hand to hand.

Many gallant deeds were done that after-
noon ; but none more gallant than those of
Captain Ochterloney and Lieutenant Peyton,
both grenadier officers in the Royal Americans.
Ochterloney had just been wounded in a duel ;
but he said his country's honour came before
his own, and, sick and wounded as he was, he
spent those panting hours in the boats without
a murmur and did all he could to form his men
up under fire. In the second charge he fell,
shot through the lungs, with Peyton beside
him, shot through the leg. When Wolfe called
the grenadiers back a rescue party wanted to
carry off both officers, to save them from the
scalping-knife. But Ochterloney said he would
never leave the field after such a defeat ; and
Peyton said he would never leave his captain.
Presently a Canadian regular came up with
two Indians, grabbed Ochterloney's watch,
sword and money, and left the Indians to
finish him. One of these savages clubbed him
with a musket, while the other shot him in the

. QUEBEC 97

chest and dashed in with a scalping-knife.
In the meantime, Peyton crawled on his
hands and knees to a double-barrelled mus-
ket and shot one Indian dead, but missed
the other. This savage now left Ochter-
loney, picked up a bayonet and rushed at
Peyton, who drew his dagger. A terrible life-
and-death fight followed; but Peyton at last
got a good point well driven home, straight
through the Indian's heart. A whole scalping
party now appeared. Ochterloney was appar-
ently dead, and Peyton was too exhausted to
fight any more. But, at this very moment,
another British party came back for the rest
of the wounded and carried Peyton off to the
boats.

Then the Indians came back to scalp Ochter-
loney. By this time, however, some French
regulars had come down, and one of them,
finding Ochterloney still alive, drove off the
Indians at the point of the bayonet, secured
help, and carried him up the hill. Montcalm
had him carefully taken into the General
Hospital, where he was tenderly nursed by
the nuns. Two days after he had been rescued,
a French officer came out for his clothes
and other effects. Wolfe then sent in twenty
guineas for his rescuer, with a promise that, in

w.c. G

98 THE WINNING OF CANADA

return for the kindness shown to Ochterloney,
the General Hospital would be specially pro-
tected if the British took Quebec. Towards
the end of August Ochterloney died ; and both
sides ceased firing while a French captain came
out to report his death and return his effects.

This was by no means the only time the two
enemies treated each other like friends. A
party of French ladies were among the prisoners
brought in to Wolfe one day ; and they cer-
tainly had no cause to complain of him. He
gave them a dinner, at which he charmed
them all by telling them about his visit to
Paris. The next morning he sent them into
Quebec with his aide-de-camp under a flag
of truce. Another time the French officers
sent him a kind of wine which was not to be
had in the British camp, and he sent them
some not to be had in their own.

But the stern work of war went on and on,
though the weary month of August did not
seem to bring victory any closer than disastrous
July. Wolfe knew that September was to be
the end of tfie campaign, the now-or-never
of his whole career. And, knowing this, he
set to work — head and heart and soul — on
making the plan that brought him victory,
death, and everlasting fame.

CHAPTER VII

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM
September 13, 1759

ON August 19 an aide-de-camp came out of
the farmhouse at Montmorency which served
as the headquarters of the British army to say
that Wolfe was too ill to rise from his bed.
The bad news spread like wildfire through
the camp and fleet, and soon became known
among the French. A week passed ; but
Wolfe was no better. Tossing about on his
bed in a fever, he thought bitterly of his double
defeat, of the critical month of September,
of the grim strength of Quebec, formed by
nature for a stronghold, and then — worse still
— of his own weak body, which made him
most helpless just when he should have been
most fit for his duty.

Feeling that he could no longer lead in
person, he dictated a letter to the brigadiers,
sent them the secret instructions he had re-
ceived from Pitt and the king, and asked them

90

ioo THE WINNING OF CANADA

to think over his three new plans for attacking
Montcalm at Beauport. They wrote back to
say they thought the defeats at the upper
fords of the Montmorency and at the heights
facing the St Lawrence showed that the
French could not be beaten by attacking the
Beauport lines again, no matter from what
side the attack was made. They then gave
him a plan of their own, which was, to convey
the army up the St Lawrence and fight their
way ashore somewhere between Cap Rouge,
nine miles above Quebec, and Pointe-aux-
Trembles, twenty- two miles above. They argued
that, by making a landing there, the British
could cut off Montcalm's communications with
Three Rivers and Montreal, from which his army
drew its supplies. Wolfe's letter was dictated
from his bed of sickness on the 26th. The
brigadiers answered him on the 29th. Saunders
talked it all over with him on the sist.
Before this the fate of Canada had been an
affair of weeks. Now it was a matter of
days ; for the morrow would dawn on the
very last possible month of the siege —
September.

After his talk with Saunders Wolfe wrote
his last letter home to his mother, telling her
of his desperate plight :

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 101

The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I
can't in conscience put the whole army to
risk. My antagonist has wisely shut him-
self up in inaccessible entrenchments, so
that I can't get at him without spilling a
torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little
purpose. The Marquis de Montcalm is at
the head of a great number of bad soldiers
and I am at the head of a small number of
good ones, that wish for nothing so much
as to fight him ; but the wary old fellow
avoids an action, doubtful of the behaviour
of his army. People must be of the pro-
fession to understand the disadvantages and
difficulties we labour under, arising from
the uncommon natural strength of the
country.

On September 2 he wrote his last letter to
Pitt. He had asked the doctors to ' patch
him up,' saying that if they could make him
fit for duty for only the next few days they need
not trouble about what might happen to him
afterwards. Their ' patching up ' certainly
cleared his fevered brain, for this letter was a
masterly account of the whole siege and the
plans just laid to bring it to an end. The style
was so good, indeed, that Charles Townshend

102 THE WINNING OF CANADA

said his brother George must have been the
real author, and that Wolfe, whom he dubbed
1 a fiery-headed fellow, only fit for fighting/
could not have done any more than sign his
name. But when George Townshend's own
official letter about the battle in which Wolfe
fell was also published, and was found to be
much less effective than Wolfe's, Selwyn went
up to Charles Townshend and said : ' Look
here, Charles, if your brother wrote Wolfe's
letter, who the devil wrote your brother's ? '
Wolfe did not try to hide anything from Pitt.
He told him plainly about the two defeats and
the terrible difficulties in the way of winning
any victory. The whole letter is too long
for quotation, and odd scraps from it give no
idea of Wolfe's lucid style. But here are a few
which tell the gist of the story :

I found myself so ill, and am still so
weak, that I begged the generals to consult
together. They are all of opinion, that, as
more ships and provisions are now got
above the town, they should try, by convey-
ing up five thousand men, to draw the
enemy from his present position and bring
him to an action. I have acquiesced in
their proposal, and we are preparing to put

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 103

it into execution. The admiral will readily
join in any measure for the public service.
There is such a choice of difficulties that
I own myself at a loss how to determine.
The affairs of Great Britain I know require
the most vigorous measures. You may be
sure that the small part of the campaign
which remains shall be employed, as far as
I am able, for the honour of His Majesty
and the interest of the nation. I am sure
of being well seconded by the admirals and
generals ; happy if our efforts here can
contribute to the success of His Majesty's
arms in any other part of America.

On the 3 ist, the day he wrote to his mother
and had his long talk with Saunders, Wolfe
began to send his guns and stores away from
the Montmorency camp. Carleton managed
the removal very cleverly ; and on September 3
only the five thousand infantry who were to
go up the St Lawrence were left there. Wolfe
tried to tempt Montcalm to attack him. But
Montcalm knew better ; and half suspected
that Wolfe himself might make another attack
on the Beauport lines. When everything was
ready, all the men at the Point of Levy who
could be spared put off in boats and rowed

104 THE WINNING OF CANADA

over towards Beauport, just as Monckton's
men had done on the disastrous last day of
July. At the same time the main division of
the fleet, under Saunders, made as if to support
these boats, while the Levis batteries thundered
against Quebec. Carleton gave the signal
from the beach at Montmorency when the tide
was high ; and the whole five thousand infantry
marched down the hill, got into their boats,
and rowed over to where the other boats were
waiting. The French now prepared to defend
themselves at once. But as the two divisions
of boats came together, they both rowed off
through the gaps between the men-of-war.
Wolfe's army had broken camp and got safely
away, right under the noses of the French,
without the loss of a single man.

A whole week, from September 3 to 10, was
then taken up with trying to see how the
brigadiers' plan could be carried out.

This plan was good, as far as it went. An
army is even harder to supply than a town
would be if the town was taken up bodily and
moved about the country. An army makes
no supplies itself, but uses up a great deal. It
must have food, clothing, arms, ammunition,
stores of all kinds, and everything else it needs
to keep it fit for action. So it must always

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 105

keep what are called ' communications ' with
the places from which it gets these supplies.
Now, Wolfe's and Montcalm's armies were
both supplied along the St Lawrence, Wolfe's
from below Quebec and Montcalm's from
above. But Wolfe had no trouble about the
safety of his own * communications,' since they
were managed and protected by the fleet.
Even before he first saw Quebec, a convoy of
supply ships had sailed from the Maritime
Provinces for his army under the charge of a
man-of-war. And so it went on all through
the siege. Including forty-nine men-of-war,
no less than 277 British vessels sailed up
to Quebec during this campaign; and not
one of them was lost on the way, though
the St Lawrence had then no lighthouses,
buoys, or other aids to navigation, as it has
now, and though the British officers them-
selves were compelled to take the ships
through the worst places in these foreign and
little-known waters. The result was that
there were abundant supplies for the British
army the whole time, thanks to the fleet.

But Montcalm was in a very different plight.
Since the previous autumn, when Wolfe and
Hardy had laid waste the coast of Gaspe, the
supply of sea-fish had almost failed. Now the

106 THE WINNING OF CANADA

whole country below Quebec had been cut off
by the fleet, while most of the country round
Quebec was being laid waste by the army.
Wolfe's orders were that no man, woman, or
child was to be touched, nor any house or other
buildings burnt, if his own men were not
attacked. But if the men of the country
fired at his soldiers they were to be shot down,
and everything they had was to be destroyed.
Of course, women and children were strictly
protected, under all circumstances, and no just
complaint was ever made against the British
for hurting a single one. But as the men per-
sisted in firing, the British fired back and
destroyed the farms where the firing took
place, on the fair-play principle that it is
right to destroy whatever is used to destroy
you.

It thus happened that, except at a few little
villages where the men had not fired on the
soldiers, the country all round Quebec was like
a desert, as far as supplies for the French were
concerned. The only way to obtain anything
for their camp was by bringing it down the
St Lawrence from Montreal, Sorel, and Three
Rivers. French vessels would come down as
far as they dared and then send the supplies on
in barges, which kept dose in under the north

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 107

shore above Quebec, where the French out-
posts and batteries protected them from the
British men-of-war that were pushing higher
and higher up the river. Some supplies were
brought in by land after they were put ashore
above the highest British vessels. But as a
hundred tons came far more easily by water than
one ton by land, it is not hard to see that Mont-
calm's men could not hold out long if the St
Lawrence near Quebec was closed to supplies.

Wolfe, Montcalm, the brigadiers, and every
one else on both sides knew this perfectly
well. But, as it was now September, the fleet
could not go far up the much more difficult
channel towards Montreal. If it did, and took
Wolfe's army with it, the few French men-of-
war might dispute the passage, and some
sunken ships might block the way, at all
events for a time. Besides, the French were
preparing to repulse any landing up the river,
between Cap Rouge, nine miles above Quebec,
and Deschambault, forty miles above ; and
with good prospect of success, because the
country favoured their irregulars. Moreover,
if Wolfe should land many miles up, Montcalm
might still hold out far down in Quebec for the
few days remaining till October. If, on the
other hand, the fleet went up and left Wolfe's

loS THE WINNING OF CANADA

men behind, Montcalm would be safer than
ever at Beauport and Quebec ; because, how
could Wolfe reach him without a fleet when he
had failed to reach him with one ?

The life-and-death question for Wolfe was
how to land close enough above Quebec and
soon enough in September to make Montcalm
fight it out on even terms and in the open
field.

The brigadiers' plan of landing high up
seemed all right till they tried to work it out.
Then they found troubles in plenty. There
were several places for them to land between
Cap Rouge, nine miles above Quebec, and
Pointe-aux-Trembles, thirteen miles higher
still. Ever since July 18 British vessels had
been passing to and fro above Quebec ; and in
August, Murray, under the guard of Holmes's
squadron, had tried his brigade against Pointe-
aux-Trembles, where he was beaten back, and
at Deschambault, twenty miles farther up,
where he took some prisoners and burnt some
supplies. To ward off further and perhaps
more serious attacks from this quarter, Mont-
calm had been keeping Bougainville on the
lookout, especially round Pointe-aux-Trembles,
for several weeks before the brigadiers arranged
their plan. Bougainville now had 2000 in-

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 109

fantry, all the mounted men — nearly 300 —
and all the best Indian and Canadian scouts,
along the thirteen miles of shore between Cap
Rouge and Pointe-aux-Trembles. His land and
water batteries had also been made much
stronger. He and Montcalm were in close
touch and could send messages to each
other and get an answer back within four
hours.

On the 7th Wolfe and the brigadiers had
a good look at every spot round Pointe-aux-
Trembles. On the 8th and 9th the brigadiers
were still there ; while five transports sailed
past Quebec on the 8th to join Holmes, whp
commanded the up-river squadron. Two of
Wolfe's brigades were now on board the
transports with Holmes. But the whole three
were needed ; and this need at once entailed
another difficulty. A successful landing on
the north shore above Quebec could only be
made under cover of the dark ; and Wolfe
could not bring the third brigade, under cover
of night, from the island of Orleans and the
Point of Levy, and land it with the other two
twenty miles up the river before daylight.
The tidal stream runs up barely five hours,
while it runs down more than seven ; and
winds are mostly down. Next, if, instead

\

I io THE WINNING OF CANADA

of sailing, the third brigade marched twenty
miles at night across very rough country on
the south shore, it would arrive later than ever.
Then, only one brigade could be put ashore in
boats at one time in one place, and Bougain-
ville could collect enough men to hold it in
check while he called in reinforcements at
least as fast on the French side as the British
could on theirs. Another thing was that the
wooded country favoured the French defence
and hindered the British attack. Lastly, if
Wolfe and Saunders collected the whole five
thousand soldiers and a still larger squadron
and convoy up the river, Montcalm would see
the men and ships being moved from their
positions in front of his Beauport entrench-
ments, and would hurry to the threatened
shore between Cap Rouge and Pointe-^ux-
Trembles almost as soon as the British, and
certainly in time to reinforce Bougainville and
repulse Wolfe.

The 9th was Wolfe's last Sunday. It was
a cheerless, rainy day ; and he almost con-
fessed himself beaten for good, as he sat writing
his last official letter to one of Pitt's friends, the
Earl of Holderness. He dated it, ' On board
the Sutherland at anchor off Cap Rouge,
September 9, 1759.' He ended it with gloomy

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM in

news : ' I am so far recovered as to be able to
do business, but my constitution is entirely
ruined, without the consolation of having done
any considerable service to the state, or with-
out any prospect of it.'

The very next day, however, he saw his
chance. He stood at Etchemin, on the south
shore, two miles above Quebec, and looked
long and earnestly through his telescope
at the Foulon road, a mile and a half away,
running up to the Plains of Abraham from
the Anse au Foulon, which has ever since
been called Wolfe's Cove. Then he looked
at the Plains themselves, especially at a spot
only one mile from Quebec, where the flat and
open ground formed a perfect field of battle for
his well-drilled regulars. He knew the Foulon
road must be fairly good, because it was the
French line of communication between the
Anse au Foulon anc1 the Beauport camp.
The Cove and the nearest point of the camp
were only two miles and a quarter apart,
as the crow flies. But between them rose
the tableland of the Plains, 300 feet above
the river. Thus they were screened from
each other, and a surprise at the Cove might
not be found out too soon at the camp.

Now, Wolfe knew that the French expected

112 THE WINNING OF CANADA

to be attacked either above Cap Rouge (up
towards Pointe-aux-Trembles) or below Quebec
(down in their Beauport entrenchments). He
also knew that his own army thought the
attack would be made above Cap Rouge.
Thus the French were still very anxious about
the six miles at Beauport, while both sides were
keenly watching each other all over the thirteen
miles above Cap Rouge. Nobody seemed to
be thinking about the nine miles between Cap
Rouge and Quebec, and least of all about the
part nearest Quebec.

Yes, one man was thinking about it, and he
never stopped thinking about it till he died.
That man was Montcalm. On the 5th, when
Wolfe began moving up-stream, Montcalm had
sent a whole battalion to the Plains. But on
the 7th, when the British generals were all at
Pointe-aux-Trembles, Vaudreuil, always ready
to spite Montcalm, ordered this battalion back
to camp, saying, ' The British haven't got
wings ; they can't fly up to the Plains ! '
Wolfe, of course, saw that the battalion had
been taken away ; and he soon found out
why. Vaudreuil was a great talker and could
never keep a secret. Wolfe knew perfectly
well that Vaudreuil and Bigot were constantly
spoiling whatever Montcalm was doing, so he

,

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 113

counted on this trouble in the French camp
as he did on other facts and chances.

He now gave up all idea of his old plans
against Beauport, as well as the new plan of
the brigadiers, and decided on another plan of
his own. It was new in one way, because he
had never seen a chance of carrying it out
before. But it was old in another way, because
he had written to his uncle from Louisbourg
on May 19, and spoken of getting up the heights
four or five miles above Quebec if he could
do so by surprise. Again, even so early in the
siege as July 18 he had been chafing at what
he called the ' coldness ' of the fleet about
pushing up beyond Quebec. The entry in his
private diary for that day is : ' The Sutherland
and Squirrell, two transports, and two armed
sloops passed the narrow passage between
Quebec and Levy without losing a man.' Next
day, his entry is more scathing still : l Recon-
noitred the country immediately above Quebec
and found that if we had ventured the stroke
that wa* first intended we should infallibly
have succeeded.' This shows how long he had
kept the plan waiting for the chance. But it
does not prove that he had missed any earlier
chances through the ' coldness ' of the fleet.
For it is significant that he afterwards struck

w.c. H

114 THE WINNING OF CANADA

out 'infallibly* and substituted 'probably';
while it must be remembered that the Suther-
land and her consorts formed only a very small
flotilla, that they passed Quebec in the middle
of a very dark night, that the St Lawrence
above the town was intricate and little known,
that the loss of several men-of-war might
have been fatal, that the enemy's attention
had not become distracted in July to anything
like the same bewildering extent as it had in
September, and that the intervening course
of events — however disappointing in itself —
certainly helped to make his plan suit the
occasion far better late than soon. More-
over, in a note to Saunders in August, he had
spoken about a ' desperate ' plan which he
could not trust his brigadiers to carry out, and
which he was then too sick to carry out him-
self.

Now that he was ' patched up ' enough for
a few days, and that the chance seemed to
be within his grasp, he made up his mind
to strike at once. He knew that the little
French post above the Anse au Foulon was
commanded by one of Bigot's blackguards,
Vergor, whose Canadian militiamen were as
slack as their commander. He knew that
the Samos battery, a little farther from Quebec,

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 115

had too small a garrison, with only five guns
and no means of firing them on the landward
side ; so that any of his men, once up the
heights, could rush it from the rear. He
knew the French had only a few weak posts
the whole way down from Cap Rouge, and
that these posts often let convoys of provision
boats pass quietly at night into the Anse au
Foulon. He knew that some of Montcalm's
best regulars had gone to Montreal with
Levis, the excellent French second-in-com-
mand, to strengthen the defence against
Amherst's slow advance from Lake Champlain.
He knew that Montcalm still had a total of
10,000 men between Montmorency and Quebec,
as against his own attacking force of 5000 ;
yet he also knew that the odds of two to one
were reversed in his favour so far as European
regulars were concerned ; for Montcalm could
not now bring 3000 French regulars into
immediate action at any one spot. Finally,
he knew that all the French were only half-fed,
and that those with Bougainville were getting
worn out by having to march across country,
in a fruitless effort to keep pace with the ships
of Holmes's squadron and convoy, which
floated up and down with the tide.

Wolfe's plan was to keep the French alarmed

ii6 THE WINNING OF CANADA

more than ever at the two extreme ends of
their line — Beauport below Quebec and Pointe-
aux-Trembles above — and then to strike home
at their undefended centre, by a surprise land-
ing at the Anse au Foulon. Once landed,
well before daylight, he could rush Vergor's
post and the Samos battery, march across the
Plains, and form his line of battle a mile
from Quebec before Montcalm could come up
in force from Beauport. Probably he could also
defeat him before Bougainville could march
down from some point well above Cap Rouge.

There were chances to reckon with in this
plan. But so there are in all plans; and
to say Wolfe took Quebec by mere luck is
utter nonsense. He was one of the deepest
thinkers on war who ever lived, especially on
the British kind of war, by land and sea to-
gether ; and he had had the preparation of a
lifetime to help him in using a fleet and army
that worked together like the two arms of one
body. He simply made a plan which took
proper account of all the facts and all the
chances. Fools make lucky hits, now and
then, by the merest chance. But no one except
a genius can make and carry out a plan like
Wolfe's, which meant at least a hundred hits
running, all in the selfsame spot.

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 117

No sooner had Wolfe made his admirable
plan that Monday morning, September 10,
than he set all the principal officers to work
out the different parts of it. But he kept the
whole a secret. Nobody except himself knew
more than one part, and how that one part was
to be worked in at the proper time and place.
Even the fact that the Anse au Foulon was
to be the landing-place was kept secret till the
last moment from everybody except Admiral
Holmes, who made all the arrangements, and
Captain Chads, the naval officer who was to
lead the first boats down. The great plot
thickened fast. The siege that had been an
affair of weeks, and the brigadiers' plan that
had been an affair of days, both gave way
to a plan in which every hour was made to
tell. Wolfe's seventy hours of consummate
manoeuvres, by land and water, over a front
of thirty miles, were followed by a battle in
which the fighting of only a few minutes
settled the fate of Canada for centuries.

During the whole of those momentous three
days— Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Sep-
tember 10, n, and 12, 1759 — Wolfe, Saunders,
and Holmes kept the French in constant
alarm about the thirteen miles above Cap
Rouge and the six miles below Quebec ; but

n8 THE WINNING OF CANADA

gave no sign by which any immediate danger
could be suspected along the nine miles between
Cap Rouge and Quebec.

Saunders stayed below Quebec. On the
1 2th he never gave the French a minute's rest
all day and night. He sent Cook and others
close in towards Beauport to lay buoys, as if
to mark out a landing-place for another attack
like the one on July 31. It is a singular co-
incidence that while Cook, the great British
circumnavigator of the globe, was trying to
get Wolfe into Quebec, Bougainville, the great
French circumnavigator, was trying to keep
him out. Towards evening Saunders formed
up his boats and filled them with marines,
whose own red coats, seen at a distance, made
them look like soldiers. He moved his fleet in
at high tide and fired furiously at the entrench-
ments. All night long his boatloads of men
rowed up and down and kept the French on the
alert. This feint against Beauport was much
helped by the men of Wolfe's third brigade,
who remained at the island of Orleans and the
Point of Levy till after dark, by a whole
battalion of marines guarding the Levis
batteries, and by these batteries themselves,
which, meanwhile, were bombarding Quebec —
again like the 3ist of July. The bombard-

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 119

tnent was kept up all night and became most
intense just before dawn, when Wolfe was
landing two miles above.

At the other end of the French line, above
Cap Rouge, Holmes had kept threatening
Bougainville more and more towards Pointe-
aux-Trembles, twenty miles above the Foulon.
Wolfe's soldiers had kept landing on the
south shore day after day ; then drifting
up with the tide on board the transports past
Pointe-aux-Trembles ; then drifting down to-
wards Cap Rouge ; and then coming back
the next day to do the same thing over again.
This had been going on, more or less, even
before Wolfe had made his plan, and it proved
very useful to him. He knew that Bougain-
ville's men were getting quite worn out by
scrambling across country, day after day, to
keep up with Holmes's restless squadron and
transports. He also knew that men who threw
themselves down, tired out, late at night could
not be collected from different places, all over
their thirteen-mile beat, and brought down in
the morning, fit to fight on a battlefield eight
miles from the nearest of them and twenty-
one from the farthest.

Montcalm was greatly troubled. He saw
redcoats with Saunders opposite Beauport,

120 THE WINNING OF CANADA

redcoats at the island, redcoats at the Point of
Levy, and redcoats guarding the Levis batteries.
He had no means of finding out at once that
the redcoats with Saunders and at the batteries
were marines, and that the redcoats who really
did belong to Wolfe were under orders to
march off after dark that very night and join
the other two brigades which were coming
down the river from the squadron above Cap
Rouge. He had no boats that could get
through the perfect screen of the British fleet.
But all that the skill of mortal man could do
against these odds he did on that fatal eve of
battle, as he had done for three years past, with
foes in front and false friends behind. He
ordered the battalion which he had sent to the
Plains on the 5th, and which Vaudreuil had
brought back on the 7th, ' now to go and camp
at the Foulon ' ; that is, at the top of the road
coming up from Wolfe's landing-place at the
Anse au Foulon. But Vaudreuil immediately
gave a counter-order and said : ' We '11 see
about that to-morrow.' VaudreuiPs ' to-
morrow ' never came.

That afternoon of the I2th, while Mont-
calm and Vaudreuil were at cross-purposes
near the mouth of the St Charles, Wolfe was
only four miles away, on the other side of the

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 121

Plains, in a boat on the St Lawrence, where
he was taking his last look at what he then
called the Foulon and what the world now
calls Wolfe's Cove. His boat was just turning
to drift up in midstream, off Sillery Point,
which is only half a mile above the Foulon.
He wanted to examine the Cove well through
his telescope at dead low tide, as he intended
to land his army there at the next low tide.
Close beside him sat young Robison, who was
not an officer in either the Army or Navy, but
who had come out to Canada as tutor to an
admiral's son, and who had been found so good
at maps that he was employed with Wolfe's
engineers in making surveys and sketches of
the ground about Quebec. Shutting up his
telescope, Wolfe sat silent a while. Then, as
afterwards recorded by Robison, he turned
towards his officers and repeated several
stanzas of Gray's Elegy. ' Gentlemen,' he
said as he ended, ' I would sooner have
written that poem than beat the French
to-morrow.' He did not know then that his
own fame would far surpass the poet's, and
that he should win it in the very way
described in one ef the lines he had just been
quoting —

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

122 THE WINNING OF CANADA

At half-past eight in the evening he was
sitting in his cabin on board Holmes's flag-
ship, the Sutherland, above Cap Rouge, with
1 Jacky Jervis ' — the future Earl St Vincent,
but now the youngest captain in the fleet, only
twenty-four. Wolfe and Jervis had both been
at the same school at Greenwich, Swinden's,
though at different times, and they were great
friends. Wolfe had made up a sealed parcel
of his notebook, his will, and the portrait of
Katherine Lowther, and he now handed it
over to Jervis for safe keeping.

But he had no chance of talking about old
times at home, for just then a letter from the
three brigadiers was handed in. It asked him
if he would not give them ' distinct orders '
about * the place or places we are to attack.'
He wrote back to the senior, Monckton, telling
him what he had arranged for the first and
second brigades, and then, separately, to
Townshend about the third, which was not
with Holmes but on the south shore. After
dark the men from the island and the Point of
Levy had marched up to join this brigade at
Etchemin, the very place where Wolfe had
made his plan on the loth, as he stood and
looked at the Foulon opposite.

His last general orders to his army had been

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 123

read out some hours before; but, of course,
the Foulon was not mentioned. These orders
show that he well understood the great issues
he was fighting for, and what men he had to
count upon. Here are only three sentences;
but how much they mean ! ' The enemy's
force is now divided. A vigorous blow struck
by the army at this juncture may determine
the fate of Canada. The officers and men will
remember what their country expects of them.'
The watchword v/as * Coventry,' which, being
probably suggested by the saying, ' Sent to
Coventry,' that is, condemned to silence, was
as apt a word for this expectant night as
1 Gibraltar,' the symbol of strength, was for
the one on which Quebec surrendered.

Just before dark Holmes sent every vessel
he could spare to make a show of force opposite
Pointe-aux-Trembles, in order to hold Bougain-
ville there overnight. But after dark the main
body of Holmes's squadron and all the boats
and small transports came together opposite
Cap Rouge. Just before ten a single lantern
appeared in the Sutherland's main topmast
shrouds. On seeing this, Chads formed up the
boats between the ships and the south shore,
the side away from the French. In three hours
every man was in his place. Not a sound was

124 THE WINNING OF CANADA

to be heard except the murmur of the strong
ebb-tide setting down towards Quebec and a
gentle south-west breeze blowing in the same
direction. ' All ready, sir 1 ' and Wolfe took
his own place in the first boat with his friend
Captain Delaune, the leader of the twenty-four
men of the * Forlorn Hope,' who were to be the
first to scale the cliff. Then a second lantern
appeared above the first ; and the whole brigade
of boats began to move off in succession.
They had about eight miles to go. But the
current ran the distance in two hours. As
they advanced they could see the flashes from
the Levis batteries growing brighter and more
frequent ; for both the land gunners there and
the seamen gunners with Saunders farther
down were increasing their fire as the hour for
Wolfe's landing drew near.

A couple of miles above the Foulon
the Hunter was anchored in midstream. As
arranged, Chads left the south shore and
steered straight for her. To his surprise he
saw her crew training their guns on him.
But they held their fire. Then Wolfe came
alongside and found that she had two French
deserters on board who had mistaken his
boats for the French provision convoy that
was expected to creep down the north shore

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 125

that very night and land at the Foulon.
He had already planned to pass his boats off
as this convoy ; for he knew that the farthest
up of Holmes's men-of-war had stopped it
above Pointe-aux-Trembles. But he was glad
to know that the French posts below Cap
Rouge had not yet heard of the stoppage.

From the Hunter his boat led the way to
Sillery Point, half a mile above the Foulon.
* Halt ! Who comes there ! ' — a French
sentry's voice rang out in the silence of the
night. ' France I ' answered young Fraser,
who had been taken into Wolfe's boat because
he spoke French like a native. ' What 's your
regiment ? ' asked the sentry. ' The Queen's,'
answered Fraser, who knew that this was the
one supplying the escort for the provision boats
the British had held up. ' But why don't you
speak out ? ' asked the sentry again. ' Hush I '
said Fraser, ' the British will hear us if you
make a noise.' And there, sure enough,
was the Hunter, drifting down, as arranged, not
far outside the column of boats. Then the
sentry let them all pass; and, in ten minutes
more, exactly at four o'clock, the leading boat
grounded in the Anse au Foulon and Wolfe
jumped ashore.

He at once took the ' Forlorn Hope ' and 200

126 THE WINNING OF CANADA

light infantry to the side of the Cove towards
Quebec, saying as he went, ' I don't know if we
shall all get up, but we must make the attempt.'
Then, while these men were scrambling up,
he went back to the middle of the Cove, where
Howe had already formed the remaining 500
light infantry. Captain Macdonald, a very
active climber, passed the * Forlorn Hope ' and
was the first man to reach the top and feel
his way through the trees to the left, towards
Vergor's tents. Presently he almost ran into
the sleepy French-Canadian sentry, who heard
only a voice speaking perfect French and telling
him it was all right — nothing but the rein-
forcements from the Beauport camp ; for
Wolfe knew that Montcalm had been trying to
get a French regular officer to replace Vergor,
who was as good a thief as Bigot and as bad a
soldier as Vaudreuil. While this little parley
was going on the * Forlorn Hope ' came up ;
when Macdonald promptly hit the sentry be-
tween the eyes with the hilt of his claymore
and knocked him flat. The light infantry
pressed on close behind. The dumbfounded
French colonial troops coming out of their
tents found themselves face to face with a
whole woodful of fixed bayonets. They fired
a few shots. The British charged with a loud

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 127

cheer. The Canadians scurried away through
the trees. And Vergor ran for dear life in his
nightshirt.

The ringing cheer with which Delaune
charged home told Wolfe at the foot of the
road that the actual top was clear. Then
Howe went up ; and in fifteen minutes all
the light infantry had joined their comrades
above. Another battalion followed quickly,
and Wolfe himself followed them. By this
time it was five o'clock and quite light. The
boats that had landed the first brigade had
already rowed through the gaps between the
small transports which were landing the second
brigade, and had reached the south shore, a
mile and a half away, where the third brigade
was waiting for them.

Meanwhile the suddenly roused gunners of
the Samos battery were firing wildly at the
British vessels. But the men-of-war fired back
with better aim, and Howe's light infantry,
coming up at a run from behind, dashed in
among the astonished gunners with the
bayonet, cleared them all out, and spiked every
gun. Howe left three companies there to
hold the battery against Bougainville later
in the day, and returned with the other seven
to Wolfe. It was now six o'clock. The

123 THE WINNING OF CANADA

third brigade had landed, the whole of the
ground at the top was clear; and Wolfe set
off with 1000 men to see what Montcalm
was doing.

Quebec stands on the eastern end of a sort
of promontory, or narrow tableland, between
the St Lawrence and the valley of the St
Charles. This tableland is less than a mile
wide and narrows still more as it approaches
Quebec. Its top is tilted over towards the
St Charles and Beauport, the cliffs being only
100 feet high there, instead of 300, as they
are beside the St Lawrence ; so Wolfe, as he
turned in towards Quebec, after marching
straight across the tableland, could look out
over the French camp. Everything seemed
quiet; so he made his left secure and sent for
his main body to follow him at once. It was
now seven. In another hour his line of battle
was formed, his reserves had taken post in his
rear, and a brigade of seamen from Saunders's
fleet were landing guns, stores, blankets, tents,
entrenching tools, and whatever else he would
need for besieging the city after defeating
Montcalm. The 3000 sailors on the beach
were anything but pleased with the tame work
of waiting there while the soldiers were fight-
ing up above. One of their officers, in a letter

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 129

home, said they could hardly stand still, and
were perpetually swearing because they were
not allowed to get into the heat of action. ,

The whole of the complicated manoeuvres,
in face of an active enemy, for three days and
three nights, by land and water, over a front
of thirty miles, had now been crowned by
complete success. The army of 5000 men had
been put ashore at the right time and in the
right way ; and it was now ready to fight one
of the great immortal battles of the world.

' The thin red line.' The phrase was in-
vented long after Wolfe's day. But Wolfe
invented the fact. The six battalions which
formed his front, that thirteenth morning of
September 1759, were drawn up in the first
two-deep line that ever stood on any field of
battle in the world since war began. And it
was Wolfe alone who made this ' thin red line,'
as surely as it was Wolfe alone who made the
plan that conquered Canada.

Meanwhile Montcalm had not been idle ;
though he was perplexed to the last, because
one of the stupid rules in the French camp was
that all news was to be told first to Vaudreuil,
who, as governor-general, could pass it on
or not, and interfere with the army as much
as he liked. When it was light enough to see
w.c. I

130 THE WINNING OF CANADA

Saunders's fleet, the island of Orleans, and the
Point of Levy, Montcalm at once noticed that
Wolfe's men had gone. He galloped down
to the bridge of boats, where he found that
Vaudreuil had already heard of Wolfe's land-
ing. At first the French thought the firing
round the Foulon was caused by an exchange
of shots between the Samos battery and some
British men-of-war that were trying to stop
the French provision boats from getting in
there. But Vergor's fugitives and the French
patrols near Quebec soon told the real story.
And then, just before seven, Montcalm himself
caught sight of Wolfe's first redcoats marching
in along the Ste Foy road. Well might he
exclaim, after all he had done and Vaudreuil
had undone : ' There they are, where they
have no right to be ! '

He at once sent orders, all along his six miles
of entrenchments, to bring up every French
regular and all the rest except 2000 militia.
But Vaudreuil again interfered ; and Mont-
calm got only the French and Canadian
regulars, 2500, and the same number of
Canadian militia with a few Indians. The
French and British totals, actually present on
the field of battle, were, therefore, almost
exactly equal, 5000 each. Vaudreuil also for-

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 131

got to order out the field guns, the horses for
which the vile and corrupt Bigot had been
using for himself. At nine Montcalm had
formed up his French and colonial regulars
between Quebec and the crest of rising ground
across the Plains beyond which lay Wolfe.
Riding forward till he could see the redcoats,
he noticed how thin their line was on its left
and in its centre, and that its right, near the
St Lawrence, had apparently not formed at
all. But his eye deceived him about the British
right, as the men were lying down there, out of
sight, behind a swell of ground. He galloped
back and asked if any one had further news.
Several officers declared they had heard that
Wolfe was entrenching, but that his right
brigade had not yet had time to march on to the
field. There was no possible way of finding out
anything else at once. The chance seemed
favourable. Montcalm knew he had to fight
or starve, as he was completely cut off by
land and water, except for one bad, swampy
road in the valley of the St Charles ; and he
ordered his line to advance.

At half-past nine the French reached the
crest and halted. The two armies were now
in full view of each other on the Plains and
only a quarter of a mile apart. The French

132 THE WINNING OF CANADA

line of battle had eight small battalions, about
2500 men, formed six deep. The colonial
regulars, in three battalions, were on the
flanks. The five battalions of French regulars
were in the centre. Montcalm, wearing a
green and gold uniform, with the brilliant
cross of St Louis over his cuirass, and mounted
on a splendid black charger, rode the whole
length of his line, to see if all were ready to
attack. The French regulars — half-fed, sorely
harassed, interfered with by Vaudreuil — were
still the victors of Ticonderoga, against the
British odds of four to one. Perhaps they
might snatch one last desperate victory from
the fortunes of war ? Certainly all would
follow wherever they were led by their beloved
Montcalm, the greatest Frenchman of the
whole New World. He said a few stirring
words to each of his well-known regiments as
he rode by ; and when he laughingly asked the
best of all, the Royal Roussillon, if they were
not tired enough to take a little rest before the
battle, they shouted back that they were never
too tired to fight — ' Forward, forward 1 ' And
their steady blue ranks, and those of the four
white regiments beside them, with bayonets
fixed and colours flying, did indeed look fit
and ready for the fray.

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 133

Wolfe also had gone along his line of battle,
the first of all two-deep thin red lines, to make
sure that every officer understood the order
that there was to be no firing until the French
came close up, to within only forty paces. As
soon as he saw Montcalm's line on the crest
he had moved his own a hundred paces for-
ward, according to previous arrangement ; so
that the two enemies were now only a long
musket - shot apart. The Canadians and
Indians were pressing round the British flanks,
under cover of the bushes, and firing hard.
But they were easily held in check by the light
infantry on the left rear of the line and by
the 35th on the right rear. The few French
and British skirmishers in the centre now ran
back to their own lines ; and before ten the
field was quite clear between the two opposing
fronts.

Wolfe had been wounded twice when going
along his line ; first in the wrist and then in
the groin. Yet he stood up so straight and
looked so cool that when he came back to
take post on the right the men there did not
know he had been hit at all. His spirit already
soared in triumph over the weakness of the
flesh. Here he was, a sick and doubly wounded
man ; but a soldier, a hero, and a conqueror,

134 THE WINNING OF CANADA

with the key to half a continent almost within
his eager grasp.

At a signal from Montcalm in the centre
the French line advanced about a hundred
yards in perfect formation. Then the Cana-
dian regulars suddenly began firing without
orders, and threw themselves flat on the
ground to reload. By the time they had got
up the French regulars had halted some dis-
tance in front of them, fired a volley, and
begun advancing again. This was too much
for the Canadians. Though they were regulars
they were not used to fighting in the open,
not trained for it, and not armed for it with
bayonets. In a couple of minutes they had all
slunk off to the flanks and joined the Indians
and militia, who were attacking the British
from under cover.

This left the French regulars face to face
with Wolfe's front : five French battalions
against the British six. These two fronts were
now to decide the fate of Canada between
them. The French still came bravely on ;
but their six-deep line was much shorter than
the British two-deep line, and they saw that
both their flanks were about to be over-lapped
by fire and steel. They inclined outwards to
save themselves from this fatal overlap on

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 135

both right and left. But that made just as
fatal a gap in their centre. Their whole line
wavered, halted oftener to fire, and fired more
wildly at each halt.

In the meantime Wolfe's front stood firm
as a rock and silent as the grave, one long,
straight, living wall of red, with the double
line of deadly keen bayonets glittering above
it. Nothing stirred along its whole length,
except the Union Jacks, waving defiance at
the fleurs-de-lis, and those patient men who
fell before a fire to which they could not
yet reply. Bayonet after bayonet would
suddenly flash out of line and fall forward,
as the stricken redcoat, standing there with
shouldered arms, quivered and sank to the
ground.

Captain York had brought up a single gun
in time for the battle, the sailors having
dragged it up the cliff and run it the whole
way across the Plains. He had been handling
it most gallantly during the French advance,
firing showers of grape-shot into their ranks
from a position right out in the open in front
of Wolfe's line. But now that the French were
closing he had to retire. The sailors then
picked up the drag-ropes and romped in with
this most effective six-pounder at full speed, as

136 THE WINNING OF CANADA

if they were having the greatest fun of their
lives.

Wolfe was standing next to the Louis-
bourg Grenadiers, who, this time, were de-
termined not to begin before they were told.
He was to give their colonel the signal to fire
the first volley ; which then was itself to be
the signal for a volley from each of the other
five battalions, one after another, all down the
line. Every musket was loaded with two
bullets, and the moment a battalion had fired
it was to advance twenty paces, loading as it
went, and then fire a ' general,' that is, each
man for himself, as hard as he could, till the
bugles sounded the charge.

Wolfe now watched every step the French
line made. Nearer and nearer it came.
A hundred paces ! — seventy - five ! — fifty ! —
forty ! 1 — Fire ! ! ! Crash ! came the volley
from the grenadiers. Five volleys more rang
out in quick succession, all so perfectly de-
livered that they sounded more like six
great guns than six battalions with hundreds
of muskets in each. Under cover of the smoke
Wolfe's men advanced their twenty paces
and halted to fire the ' general.' The dense,
six-deep lines of Frenchmen reeled, staggered,
and seemed to melt away under this awful

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 137

deluge of lead. In five minutes their right
was shaken out of all formation. All that
remained of it turned and fled, a wild, mad
mob of panic-stricken fugitives. The centre
followed at once. But the Royal Roussillon
stood fast a little longer ; and when it also
turned it had only three unwounded officers
left, and they were trying to rally it.

Montcalm, who had led the centre and had
been wounded in the advance, galloped over to
the Royal Roussillon as it was making this last
stand. But even he could not stem the rush
that followed and that carried him along with
it. Over the crest and down to the valley of
the St Charles his army fled, the Canadians
and Indians scurrying away through the bushes
as hard as they could run. While making
one more effort to rally enough men to cover
the retreat he was struck again, this time by
a dozen grape-shot from York's gun. He
reeled in the saddle. But two of his grena-
diers caught him and held him up while he
rode into Quebec. As he passed through St
Louis Gate a terrified woman called out, * Oh !
look at the marquis, he 's killed, he 's killed I *
But Montcalm, by a supreme effort, sat up
straight for a moment and said : ' It is nothing
at all, my kind friend ; you must not be so

138 THE WINNING OF CANADA

much alarmed ! ' and, saying this, passed on
to die, a hero to the very last.

In the thick of the short, fierce fire-fight
the bagpipes began to skirl, the Highlanders
dashed down their muskets, drew their clay-
mores, and gave a yell that might have been
heard across the river. In a moment every
British bugle was sounding the ' Charge ' and
the whole red, living wall was rushing forward
with a roaring cheer.

But it charged without Wolfe. He had
been mortally wounded just after giving the
signal for those famous volleys. Two officers
sprang to his side. ' Hold me up ! ' he im-
plored them, ' don't let my gallant fellows see
me fall 1 ' With the help of a couple of men
he was carried back to the far side of a little
knoll and seated on a grenadier's folded coat,
while the grenadier who had taken it off ran
over to a spring to get some water. Wolfe
knew at once that he was dying. But he did
not yet know how the battle had gone. His
head had sunk on his breast, and his eyes were
already glazing, when an officer on the knoll
called out, * They run ! They run ! 'Egad,
they give way everywhere ! ' Rousing him-
self, as if from sleep, Wolfe asked, ' Who
run ? ' — ' The French, sir ! ' — ' Then I die

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM 139

content I ' — and, almost as he said it, he
breathed his last.

He was not buried on the field he won, nor
even in the country that he conquered. All
that was mortal of him — his poor, sick,
wounded body — was borne back across the
sea, and carried in mourning triumph through
his native land. And there, in the family
vault at Greenwich, near the school he had
left for his first war, half his short life ago,
he was laid to rest on November 20 — at the
very time when his own great victory be-
fore Quebec was being confirmed by Hawke's
magnificently daring attack on the French
fleet amid all the dangers of that wild night
in Quiberon Bay.

Canada has none of his mortality. But
could she have anything more sacred than the
spot from which his soaring spirit took its
flight into immortal fame ? And could this
sacred spot be marked by any words more
winged than these :

HERE DIED

WOLFE
VICTORIOUS

CHAPTER VIII

EPILOGUE— THE LAST 3TAND

WOLFE'S victory on the Plains of Abraham
proved decisive in the end ; but it was not the
last of the great struggle for the Key of Canada.

After Wolfe had died on the field of battle,
and Monckton had been disabled by his
wounds, Townshend took command, received
the surrender of Quebec on the i8th, and
waited till the French field army had retired
towards Montreal. Then he sailed home with
Saunders, leaving Murray to hold what Wolfe
had won. Saunders left Lord Colville in charge
of a strong squadron, with orders to wait at
Halifax till the spring.

Both French and British spent a terrible
winter. The French had better shelter in
Montreal than the British had among the ruins
of Quebec ; and, being more accustomed to
the rigours of the climate, they would have
suffered less from cold in any case. But their
lot was, on the whole, the harder of the two ;

140

EPILOGUE— THE LAST STAND 141

for food was particularly bad and scarce in
Montreal, where even horseflesh was thought a
luxury. Both armies were ravaged by disease
to a most alarming extent. Of the eight
thousand men with whom Murray began that
deadly winter not one-half were able to bear
arms in the spring ; and not one-half of those
who did bear arms then were really fit for
duty.

Montcalm's successor, Levis, now made a
skilful, bold, and gallant attempt to retake
Quebec before navigation opened. Calling the
whole remaining strength of New France to
his aid, he took his army down in April, mostly
by way of the St Lawrence. The weather was
stormy. The banks of the river were lined
with rotting ice. The roads were almost im-
passable. Yet, after a journey of less than
ten days, the whole French army appeared
before Quebec. Murray was at once con-
fronted by a dire dilemma. The landward
defences had never been strong ; and he had
not been able to do more than patch them up.
If he remained behind them Levis would close
in, batter them down, and probably carry them
by assault against a sickly garrison depressed
by being kept within the walls. If, on the
other hand, he marched out, he would have

142 THE WINNING OF CANADA

to meet more than double numbers at the
least ; for some men would have to be left
to cover a retreat ; and he knew the French
grand total was nearly thrice his own. But
he chose this bolder course j and at the chill
dawn of April 28, he paraded his little
attacking force of a bare three thousand
men on the freezing snow and mud of the
Esplanade and then marched out.

The two armies met at Ste Foy, a mile and
a half beyond the walls ; and a desperate
battle ensued. The French had twice as
many men in action, but only half of these were
regulars ; the others had no bayonets ; and
there was no effective artillery to keep down
the fire of Murray's commanding guns. The
terrific fight went on for hours, while victory
inclined neither to one side nor the other. It
was a far more stubborn and much bloodier
contest than Wolfe's of the year before. At
last a British battalion was fairly caught in
flank by overwhelming numbers and driven
across the front of Murray's guns, whose pro-
tecting fire it thus completely masked at a
most critical time. Murray thereupon ordered
up his last reserve. But even so he could no
longer stand his ground. Slowly and sullenly
his exhausted men fell back before the French,

EPILOGUE— THE LAST STAND 143

who put the very last ounce of their own failing
strength into a charge that took the guns.
Then the beaten British staggered in behind
their walls, while the victorious French stood
fast, worn out by the hardships of their march
and fought to a standstill in the battle. \

Levis rallied his army for one more effort
and pressed the siege to the uttermost of his
power. Murray had lost a thousand men and
could now muster less than three thousand.
Each side prepared to fight the other to the
death. But both knew that the result would
depend on the fleets. There had been no news
from Europe since navigation closed ; and
hopes ran high among the besiegers that
perhaps some friendly men-of-war might still
be first ; when of course Quebec would have
to surrender at discretion, and Canada would
certainly be saved for France if the half-
expected peace would only follow soon.

Day after day all eyes, both French and
British, looked seaward from the heights and
walls ; though fleets had never yet been known
to come up the St Lawrence so early in the
season. At last, on May 9, the tops of a
man-of-war were sighted just beyond the
Point of Levy. Either she or Quebec, or
both, might have false colours flying. So

144 THE WINNING OF CANADA

neither besiegers nor besieged knew to which
side she belonged. Nor did she know her-
self whether Quebec was French or British.
Slowly she rounded into the harbour, her crew
at quarters, her decks all cleared for action.
She saluted with twenty-one guns and swung
out her captain's barge. Then, for the first
time, every one watching knew what she was ;
for the barge was heading straight in towards
the town, and redcoats and bluejackets could
see each other plainly. In a moment every
British soldier who could stand had climbed
the nearest wall and was cheering her to the
echo ; while the gunners showed their delight
by loading and firing as fast as possible and
making all the noise they could.

But one ship was not enough to turn the
scale ; and Levis redoubled his efforts. On the
night of the i$th French hopes suddenly flared
up all through the camp when the word flew
round that three strange men-of-war just re-
ported down off Beauport were the vanguard
of a great French fleet. But daylight showed
them to be British, and British bent on immedi-
ate and vigorous attack. Two of these frigates
made straight for the French flotilla, which fled
in wild confusion, covered by the undaunted
Vauquelin in the Atalante, which fought a

LORD AMHERST
From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds

EPILOGUE— THE LAST STAND 145

gallant rearguard action all the twenty miles
to Pointe-aux-Trembles, where she was driven
ashore and forced to strike her colours, after
another, and still more desperate, resistance of
over two hours. That night Levis raised the
siege in despair and retired on Montreal.
Next morning Lord Colville arrived with the
main body of the fleet, having made the earliest
ascent of the St Lawrence ever known to naval
history, before that time or since.

Then came the final scene of all this moving
drama. Step by step overpowering British
forces closed in on the doomed and dwindling
army of New France. They closed in from
east and west and south, each one of their
converging columns more than a match for all
that was left of the French. Whichever way
he looked, Levis could see no loophole of escape.
There was nothing but certain defeat in front
and on both flanks, and starvation in the rear.
So when the advancing British met, all together,
at the island of Montreal, he and his faithful
regulars laid down their arms without dis-
honour, in the fully justifiable belief that no
further use of them could possibly retrieve the
great lost cause of France in Canada.

w.c.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

WOLFE is one of the great heroes in countless
books of modern British history, by far the
greatest hero in the many books about the fight
for Canada, and the single hero of four biographies.
It was more than a century after his triumphant
death before the first of these appeared : The Life
of Ma/or- General James Wolfe by Robert Wright.
A second Life of Wolfe appeared a generation
later, this time in the form of a small volume by
A. G. Bradley in the English Men of Action'
series. The third and fourth biographies were
both published in 1909, the year which marked
the third jubilee of the Battle of the Plains. One
of them, Edward Salmon's General Wolfe, devotes
more than the usual perfunctory attention to the
important influence of sea -power; but it is a
sketch rather than a complete biography, and it
is by no means free from error. The other is
The Life and Letters of James Wolfe by Beckles
Willson.

The histories written with the best knowledge
of Wolfe's career in Canada are : the contemporary
Journal of the Campaigns in North America by
Captain John Knox, Parkman's Montcalm and
Wolfe, and The Siege of Quebec and the Battle of

m

148 THE WINNING OF CANADA

the Plains of Abraham by A. G. Doughty and
G. W. Parmelee. Knox's two very scarce quarto
volumes have been edited by A. G. Doughty for
the Champlain Society for republication in 1914.
Parkman's work is always excellent. But he
wrote before seeing some of the evidence so
admirably revealed in Dr Doughty's six volumes,
and, like the rest, he failed to understand the real
value of the fleet.

INDEX

Amherst, General, at battle of
Dettingen, 14 ; and Wolfe,

55, 57. <>4, 74, 87, "5-
Anse au Foulon. See Wolfe's

Cove.
Anson, Lord, 51 ; and Pitt's

plans against France, 71.

Barr6, Colonel, with Wolfe at
Quebec, 73.

Bigot, Francois, intendant of
New France, and Montcalm,
86-7, 131-

Boscawen, Admiral, 55 ; ' Old
Dreadnought,' 57 ; at siege
of Louisbourg, 63.

Bougainville, Colonel, slips past
Admiral Durell into the St
Lawrence, 84; in con-
junction with Montcalm
above Quebec, 108-9, IJS» IJ8.

Braddock, General, defeated by
the French in Ohio, 52.

Syng, Admiral, court-martialled
and shot, 52.

Campbell, Sir James, succeeds
Wolfe as colonel of 67th Foot,
67 note.

Cap Rouge, and the siege of
Quebec, 107, 108, 123.

Carleton, Colonel Guy, 37 ;
with Wolfe at Quebec, 68, 73,
77, 103, 104 ; and Wolfe's
will, 82.

Chads, Captain, and the land-
ing at Wolfe's Cove, 117, 123,
124.

Colville, Lord, 140; his early
ascent of the St Lawrence
saves Quebec for the British,

MS-

Cook, Captain, with Wolfe at
Quebec as navigating officer,
75, 85, 92, n8.

Culloden Moor, battle of, 24-5.

Cumberland, Duke of, 9 ; at Det-
tingen, 13-14, 19, 21 ; at Cul-
loden, 24 ; at Laffeldt, 25, 26.

Delaune, Captain, leader of the
' Forlorn Hope ' in ascent of
the Heights, 68, 124, 127.

Dettingen, battle of, 14-22.

Drucour, Chevalier de, French
commander at Louisbourg,
57, 62 ; surrenders, 63.

Dundonald, Lord, killed at
Louisbourg, 62.

Durell, Admiral, 74, 77; lets
French ships slip through to
Quebec, 84.

Ferdinand of Brunswick, vic-
torious at Minden, 67, 70.

' Forlorn Hope,' the, in ascent
of the Heights, 125-6.

France, her relations with
Great Britain, 43-6, 48 ; pre-
paring to invade British Isles,

7i.

Fraser, Simon, at the landing
at Wolfe's Cove, 125.

Gabarus Bay, the landing of
the British at, 58-60.

149

ISO THE WINNING OF CANADA

George II and Wolfe, 8, 9 ; at
Dettingen, 13-14, 16, 17-18,
21 ; and his appreciation of
Wolfe, 72.

Glasgow, Wolfe with the 20th
at, 28-30, 39-40.

Goldsmith, Oliver, and Wolfe,

2, 39-

Gray's ' Elegy,' Wolfe and, 121.

Great Britain, her relations with
France, 43-6 ; her sea-power,
47-51 ; joy in at capture of
Louisbourg, 65.

Halifax, Wolfe at ball in, 65 ;
the fleet at, 77.

Hardy, Admiral Sir Charles, at
Louisbourg, 57.

Hawke, Admiral, at Rochefort,
53 ; at Quiberon Bay, 56, 139.

Highlanders, Wolfe's idea of
raising a regiment of, 31 ;
with Wolfe at Quebec, 78 ;
dress of, 79.

Holmes, Admiral, 74 ; keeps
Bougainville employed above
Quebec while Wolfe is mak-
ing his landing and ascent,
117, 119, 123.

Howe, Lord, 41 ; Wolfe's
opinion of, 64.

Howe, Colonel, with Wolfe at
Quebec, 68, 73, 80 ; and
Wolfe's will, 82 ; at landing
at Wolfe's Cove, 126, 127.

Hughes, Admiral, with Wolfe
at Quebec, 75. /

Hundred Years' War, 44-5 ;
Second Hundred Years' War,
45-6-

Jervis, Captain, 75 ; receives
Wolfe's will on the eve of the
Battle of the Plains, 122.

Killick, Captain, and the

French pilot, 85-6.
King's Royal Rifle Corps, the,

with Wolfe at Quebec, 80-2.

Lawson, Elizabeth, and Wolfe,

28, 31, 70.
Levis, General, 115 ; his victory

at Ste Foy, 141-3; besieges

Quebec, 143-5 ; lays down his

arms, 145.
Levis Heights, 89 ; abandoned

by the French and occupied

by Wolfe, 90.
Ligonier, Sir John (afterwards

Lord), in battle of Laffeldt,

26 ; and Wolfe, 69.
Louis XV receives Wolfe, 34,

37-

Louisbourg, position and gar-
rison of, 55-7, 6 1 ; surrender
of, 63.

Louisbourg Grenadiers, with
Wolfe at Quebec, 80, 92, 94-

95» 136.

Lowther, Katherine (after-
wards Duchess of Bolton),
engaged to Wolfe, 70, 82.

Macdonald, Captain, in the
ascent of the Heights, 126.

Monckton, General, at Dettin-
gen, 14 ; with Wolfe at
Quebec, 73, 122 ; disabled, 140.

Montcalm, Marquis de, takes
Oswego, 52; takes Fort
William Henry, 53 ; his vic-
tory at Ticonderoga, 62, 64 ;
finds out Pitt's plan, 84;
thwarted by Vaudreuil and
Bigot, 86-7, 9°. II2» 119-20;
his defence of Quebec, 87-9,
100, 101, 103, 105-7, 115; on
the morning of Wolfe's land-

INDEX

ing at the Foulon, 129-30;
the Battle of the Plains, 131-8.

Montmorency river, 87 ; Wolfe
repulsed at upper fords, 90-1 ;
his camp at, 93, 99, 103.

Murray, General, with Wolfe
at Quebec, 73, 108 ; in com-
mand in Quebec, 140 ; forced
to retire at Ste Foy, 141-3.

Noailles, Marshal, French
commander at Dettingen, 17.

Ochterloney, Captain, his gal-
lant conduct on the battle-
field, 96 ; is the cause of an
exchange of courtesies be-
tween Wolfe and Mont calm,
97-8.

Pepperrell, Sir William, takes

Louisbourg, 55.
Peyton, Lieutenant, his deadly

combat while wounded at

Quebec, 96-7.
Pitt, William, and the Seven

Years' War, 50-1, 52, 53;

and Wolfe, 54, 65-6; his

Empire Year of 1759, 70-2.
Pointe-aux-Trembles, and the

siege of Quebec, 108.
Pompadour, Marquise de, and

Wolfe, 37-8.
Portsmouth, Wolfe at, 67, 75.

Quebec, 71-2 ; its defences,
87-9 ; siege of, 90-140 ; posi-
tion of, 128 ; besieged by
Levis, 141-5.

Richmond, Duke of, and
Wolfe, 37.

Rickson, Captain, and Wolfe's
letters to, 20, 31, 6p.

Robison, with Wolfe at Que-
bec, 121.

Rochefort, Wolfe learns value
of combined action of army
and fleet at, 53-4.

Roland, Wolfe's servant, 26-7.

Saguenay, the British fleet
opposite the, 83.

St Vincent, Earl. See Jervis.

Ste Foy, battle of, 142-3.

Samps battery, spiked by
British, 127.

Saunders, Admiral, 51, 53, 71 ;
personnel of his fleet at
Quebec, 74-7, 78, 82; and
Wolfe's plans, 100, 103 ; by
threatening a landing below
Quebec he enables Wolfe to
land at the Foulon, 117-18.

Scotland, Wolfe in, 28-32, 39-
40 ; a French map of, 32.

Seven Years' War, the, 50.

Townshend, Charles, and
Wolfe's letter to Pitt, 101-2.

Townshend, General, at Det-
tingen, 14 ; with Wolfe at
Quebec, 73, 102, 122 ; receives
the surrender of Quebec, 140.

Vaudreuil, Marquis de, and
Montcalm, 86-7, 90, 112, 129,
130.

Vauquelin, Captain, his gallant
rearguard action against
British frigates, 144-5.

Vergor, commands post above
the Foulon, 114 ; is surprised
by the British, 127.

Warde, George, and Wolfe, 4,

7, 8, ii, 82.
Williamson, Colonel, with

Wolfe at Quebec, 73.
Wolfe family, the, descendants

of in Canada, i. .

152 THE WINNING OF CANADA

Wolfe, Edward, joins his
brother in Flanders, 12-13 ; j
at Dettingen, 14-16, 18-19 5
his death, 22.

Wolfe, General James, his an- j
cestry, parentage, and birth, !
*-3t 5> 8 ; when at school i
volunteers to serve in war
against Spain, 4-8 ; receives
his first commission as second
lieutenant in Marines, 8-9 ;
as ensign in I2th Foot, 9-
ii ; joined by his brother in
Flanders, 12 ; as adjutant at
Dettingen, 14-16, 18-22 ; pro-
moted to a captaincy in 4th
Foot, 22 ; at Culloden, 24-5 ;
as brigade-major wounded
at Laffeldt, 25-7 ; as major
of the 20th m Glasgow, 28-9 ;
as lieutenant-colonel earnsthe
name of 'the soldier's friend,'
30, 38-9 ; his love of sport,
32 ; his opinion of Irish
women, 32-3 ; meets Philip
Stanhope in Paris, 35 ; his
daily life in Paris, 36-7 ; pre-
sented to Louis XV and"
Marquise de Pompadour,
37-8: back in Glasgow, 39-
40 ; his love of dogs, 41-2 ;
his place in the Seven Years'
War, 50, 51 ; as senior staff
officeratRochefort,53; comes
under the notice of Pitt, 54 ;
as brigadier-general under
Amherst at Louisbourg, 55 ;
at landing at Gabarus Bay,
58-60 ; silences guns on Goat

Island, 61 ; an Imperial hero,
64-6 ; made full colonel of the
67th, 67 ; his choice of officers
for the Quebec campaign,
68-9, 72-3 ! his departure from
Portsmouth, 75 ; the regi-
ments under his command,
and their dress, 78-82 ; makes
his will before leaving Louis-
bourg for Quebec, 82-3 ; his
voyage to Quebec, 83-6 ;
where he is confronted with
a stiff problem, 86-9 ; occu-
pies Levis Heights and is
repulsed at the Montmorency
fords, 90 ; his first combined
attack on Quebec fails, 91-5 ;
an exchange of courtesies
with the French, 97-8 ; falls
ill at Montmorency, 99 ; his
brigadiers' plan of attack
fails, 100-11, 113; his own
plan by way of Wolfe's Cove,
IH-2I ; on the eve of the
Battle of the Plains, 122-3 ;
the landing at Wolfe's Cove,
I23~5 » the ascent of the
Heights, 127-8 ; the Battle of
the Plains, 133-9 > his letters,
6-7, 20-2, 22-3, 29-30, 31-2,
34-5, 36-7, 39, 41, 69, loo-i,
101-3, uo-ii.

Wolfe, Major Walter, Wolfe's
uncle in Dublin, 32, 39.

Wolfe's Cove, in, 115, 123-6.

York, Captain, with his six-
pounder at the Battle of the
Plains, 135-6, 137.

THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
of the University of Toronto

A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for
popular reading, designed to set forth, in historic con-
tinuity, the principal events and movements in Canada,
from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.

PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. The Dawn of Canadian History

A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

2. The Mariner of St Malo

A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. The Founder of New France

A Chronicle of Champlain

BY CHARLES W. COLBY

i

4. The Jesuit Missions

A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness

BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada

A Chronicle of New- World Feudalism

BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

6. The Great Intendant

A Chronicle of Jean Talon

BY THOMAS CHAPAIS

7. The Fighting Governor

A Chronicle of Frontenac

BY CHARLES W. COLBY

The Chronicles of Canada

PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. The Great Fortress

A Chronicle of Louisbourg

BY WILLIAM WOOD

9. The Acadian Exiles

A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline

BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY

10. The Passing of New France

A Chronicle of Montcalm

BY WILLIAM WOOD

11. The Winning of Canada

A Chronicle of Wolfe

BY WILLIAM WOOD

PART IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH CANADA

12. The Father of British Canada

A Chronicle of Carleton

BY WILLIAM WOOD

13* The United Empire Loyalists

A Chronicle of the Great Migration

BY W. STEWART WALLACE

14. The War with the United States

A Chronicle of 1812

BY WILLIAM WOOD

PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA

15. The War Chief of the Ottawas

A Chronicle of the Pontiac War

BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

1 6. The War Chief of the Six Nations

A Chronicle of Joseph Brant

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

17. Tecumseh

A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND

The Chronicles of Canada

PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

1 8. The 'Adventurers of England ' on Hudson

Bay

A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
BY AGNES C. LAUT

19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains

A Chronicle of La V£rendrye and his Sons

BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE

20. Adventurers cf the Far North

A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

21. The Red River Colony

A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

22. Pioneers of the Pacific Coast

A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
BY AGNES C. LAUT

23. The Cariboo Trail

A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
BY AGNES C. LAUT

PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

24. The Family Compact

A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada

BY W. STEWART WALLACE

25. The Patriotes of '37

A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada

BY ALFRED D. DECELLES

26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia

A Chronicle of Joseph Howe

BY WILLIAM LAWSON GRANT

27. The Winning of Popular Government

A Chronicle of the Union of 1841

BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN

The Chronicles of Canada

PART VIII. THE GROWTH OF NATIONALITY

28. The Fathers of Confederation

A. Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion

BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN

29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald

A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
BY SIR JOSEPH POPE

30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier

A Chronicle of Our Own Times

BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

PART IX. NATIONAL HIGHWAYS

31. All Afloat

A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways

BY WILLIAM WOOD

32. The Railway Builders

A Chronicle of Overland Highways

BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

Published by
Glasgow, Brook & Company

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